When Vantage Point is staying with Quaid and Fox as they hunt the suspected assassins (including the arrestingly beautiful Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer) it's a perfectly serviceable thriller with high production values and some better-than-average car chases. Fox is more or less a blank slate, while Quaid is able to sell the idea of a 50-ish Secret Service agent pulling out all the stops to save the day, releasing what one presumes is decades worth of tension built up from idling in the hallways of swank hotels, talking into his thumb and forefinger. Momentum is lost, however, whenever Whitaker's mini-drama is returned to the forefront — his character thinks a lost little girl in the crowd is somehow in danger and aims to protect her. Surprisingly, the scene of President Hurt in "exile" — he can't very well be seen after the world thinks he's just been blown away — are also lackluster. Director Pete Travis allows numerous opportunities to slip through his fingers in that vignette; some comedy, or some additional growling from the great Bruce McGill as a frustrated Presidential aide, would have gone a long way.

Often with such gimmick films it's impossible not to wonder if they would have played better straight-up, without all the hoopla. In the case of Vantage Point, the answer is decidedly yes. The elements that work in the film — the car chases, the pursuit of the suspects, Quaid's storyline — are all forward-looking, moving towards a conclusion and only slowed down by the poorly paced track-backs to Forest Whitaker's story-within-a-story and the internal drama between the terrorists, which is much ado about nothing. This is a film about chasers and those being chased, and everything else is a distraction. That said, a director's cut that included the entire backstory of how the President managed to find an exact double and get him on the payroll would be fascinating.

— Ryan Stewart