Vantage Point

"Vantage Point" is an action thriller taking its cues from Rashomon and Groundhog Day, where we see the assassination of the US President through the eyes of different characters at a peace summit in Spain. The problem is that its chief conceit causes unintended comedy as the vignettes keep restarting through each main character's point of view, and audience will laugh at each transition once they get the rhythm of the story's framework.

Character development is nil, as the various characters are pretty much cardboard cutouts, existing only because they are needed on a perfunctory basis for the box-within-a-box storytelling exercise that's the main focus of the film. The finale is so over-the-top, over-cooked, and over-wrought, it produced even more unintended laughter from the audience through its sheer audacity and panache, while pandering to the poor screenwriter's use of extreme coincidence to tidy everything up.

I give it 2 stars, or a grade of C.