In case you hadn’t noticed—and you might not have, given how unpopular these films have been—there are two primary narrative gimmicks being employed in this winter’s low-budget films.

The first is the “reality”-based notion of a movie’s characters filming the story’s events themselves. Cloverfield was the highest-profile example of this, with George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, uh, fleshing out the technique to lesser effect.

The second gimmick is the multiple-perspectives-on-a-single-series-of-events trick which featured most gratingly in Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. The notion here is that more and more facts get revealed the more times we see the story retold. In Lumet’s case, though—and in the indie horror flick The Signal, also out this week—the scheme is not really as rigorous as it might want to seem. The approach almost guarantees that the narrative is not just going to be repeated; it’s going to move forward, too.

Vantage Point is a third winter entry in the multiple-perspectives sweepstakes, and it probably comes the closest to winning. In this case, the film examines the perspective offered by eight witnesses to a terrorist attack and abduction. The script that director Peter Travis is working with (mostly) forces each character to replay the same fifteen-minute time period; and in that regard, it really does pay off on the promise that the end of the film really will dovetail with the conclusion of the first “act.”

The basic setup is a Presidential Secret Service detail at a peace summit in Spain. Terrorist factions are none too happy with the deal being reached and stage an elaborate assassination attempt coupled with a sequence of bombings and an abduction. At the center of it all is Dennis Quaid’s Agent Barnes, who once took a bullet for the President and who is now, on his first return detail, a bit skittish. Are his instincts reliable any longer? Is the President dead? Who shot him? Is it a conspiracy, or a single shooter? Will Barnes save the day? (And durn that trailer for giving away too much of the fun!)

Cleverly, the first sequence is told not from Barnes’ point of view, but from within a network news mobile studio. We see the story unfold, for the first time, from the most “objective” point of view possible—all while being reminded that news coverage is not the least bit objective.

Next up… Barnes’ own limited and subjective experience of the events. From there, we move out to cover things from other “vantage points.” Frustratingly, segments tend to conclude with character’s saying something like “Wait a minute! What was that?” without our having had the benefit of seeing what they’ve seen. Ultimately irritatingly, each segment also begins with the same church bells chiming noon. But the flashbacks culminate in an intense Bourne-style summation of several different narratives.

It’s here where the central gimmick breaks down—and where the movie is most effective.

In order to deliver a taut, exciting finale, it’s really not possible to follow a single character during that final tour through the Big Fifteen Minutes in Salamanca. In fact, so much of the final segment focuses yet again on Barnes, and so much detail is packed into the sequence, that I found myself wondering why the movie had forced me to bother with two or three of the earlier segments.

Still, that final segment is awfully satisfying, even if there isn’t any quotable dialogue in the film and Vantage Point ends up being about nothing at all. It’s like getting to the bottom of your popcorn bag and realizing you’ve just had nothing but popcorn.

Yummy. But when’s dinner?

Vantage Point is rated PG-13 for “sequences of intense violence and action, some disturbing images and brief strong language.” Once again (in a recent, unexplained fit of sanity), the MPAA is on the mark—and I don’t have anything to add.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Greg attended a press screening of Vantage Point. Also see Attention Span Theater, a commentary Greg has written about the experience of screening Vantage Point.