A marvelously frantic suspense movie about a presidential assassination attempt, Vantage Point,has been issued by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has several famous stars in smallish roles, but the hero is a recovering Secret Service agent, played by Dennis Quaid, who may have been called back to duty too soon after defending the president from a previous attempt.William Hurt is the president, and Forest Whitaker, Matthew Fox, and Sigourney Weaver are also featured in the 2007 production. The 90-minute movie’s primary gimmick is that the actual story occurs during a relatively brief period of time-about a half hour, total-but the film replays the incident from different character viewpoints. There are six of these segments. The first five run about 10 minutes each and then the final one, which has multiple viewpoints, runs about 30 minutes. The filmmakers do cheat the chronology a little, and when you stop to think about the coincidences and the central premise, the movie may seem a little silly. Nevertheless, it doesn’t take more than the first few minutes to get totally wrapped up in the intrigue and excitement as the story barrels ahead, rolls back, and then barrels ahead again, while your disbelief stands panting in the street, unable to catch up.

The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is sharp. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound accentuates the action effectively and has plenty of power. There is an alternate French track in standard stereo and alternate Spanish, Portuguese and Thai tracks in 5.1 Dolby, along with optional English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai subtitles. There is a decent 27-minute production documentary, an even better 16-minute piece that goes over how the script was developed, a fine 7-minute piece about the stunts and a minute-long blooper gag.

After the production featurettes, director Pete Travis doesn’t really have much to add in his commentary track. He never goes into too much detail, but talks in general terms about how various scenes were staged and how things were altered in the editing room.

As the sound enhances the film’s excitement, so does the Blu-ray release deliver even more thrills than the DVD. Rear channel directional effects, clearer details and deeper, better rounded power add considerably to a viewer’s involvement in the action scenes and the story as a whole. There are four alternate language tracks and eight subtitling tracks including English. The special features that appear on the DVD are all included, and there is an additional feature that is fun, but really more promising for what it represents than what it delivers. Since most of the movie is set in a relatively confined location (it takes place in Spain, although a lot of it was shot in Mexico City), the BD allows you to bring up a schematic at the bottom of the screen that tracks each major character’s location and alternate viewpoints. It isn’t always present-which also leads to the suspicion that the filmmakers are cheating here and there-but it reinforces the movie’s basic concept in an entertaining manner.

August 21, 2008

– by Douglas Pratt

Douglas Pratt’s DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter is published monthly.
For a free sample, call (516)594-9304 or go to his website at www.DVDLaser.com

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