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Dir. Pete Travis
Rating: 4.4 | 1 User Review | Send to Friend
In the ensuing 58 years since Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, filmmakers have employed the 'single-story, multiple-POV's' device countless times. In the right hands, the conceit can work on a level that very much emulates human society: We all have our own perspective on events which cloud and inform whatever we feel is true, damn the facts. In this idiotic action thriller from slick director Pete Travis, however, the idea is to take one enormous event -- the assassination attempt of the American president at a Spanish summit meeting -- and rewind the events again and again through different character perspectives. Thus, we see the event through the eyes of a TV control room; a jumpy secret service agent (Dennis Quaid); a Spanish police officer (Edgar Ramirez), who may or may not be in on the conspiracy; a bystander holding an HD camera (Forrest Whitaker); the President himself (William Hurt); and, finally, the conspirators themselves. The problem is, the film pointlessly jumps forward and rewinds so many times, you grow to loathe the whole concept. The device only works when you glean something new and significant out of each retelling; here, all we get is a rehash of events with a few extra bits of plot schematics thrown in, each one more unrealistic than the one proceeding it.. You can't call it a puzzle because there is literally nothing for the viewer to put together. Each piece is laid out before your eyes so you don't have to do any work on your own. Notably, the grand conspiracy, one of those affairs involving thousands of elements somehow working in perfect conjunction, exactly on time, is seemingly run almost entirely via the head terrorist's fancy cell phone. With it, he keeps contact with his various team members, detonates remote-controlled bombs, and even targets and fires the bullets of the rifle used to shoot at the president. Though no service provider is identified as taking credit for such cellular efficiency, one can only lament the missed commercial possibilities: This assassination attempt and subsequent cover up has been brought to you by the new at&t, more bars in more places.
The disc also includes outtakes, cast interviews, a featurette on the making of the film and commentary with the director.
1 User Review
Rating: 5.4
By: Saniyyah Bilal
It was really annoying how the movie kept rewinding back and forth. Nothing significant was even shown each time, they really could have simply played the movies all the way through.
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