Labyrinthine ‘Vantage Point’ goes nowhere

As sinister plans go, the new thriller “Vantage Point” has a doozy, involving a presidential assassination, two bombings, double-crossers, a kidnapping and Dennis Quaid’s jitters. Alas, this well-crafted terrorist plot is sandwiched between two terrible acts, making for the kind of movie that you should walk into late and sneak out of early.

The film begins at noon, where an unpopular U.S. president (William Hurt) is arriving at a public square in Salamanca, Spain, to participate in a global anti-terror conference. He’s accompanied by Secret Service agents, including Thomas Barnes (Quaid) — back on his first assignment after taking a bullet for the president one year earlier — and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox). Howard (Forest Whitaker), an American tourist, is videotaping the event, while cable news producer Rex (Sigourney Weaver) is overseeing several cameras in various locations.

Suddenly, the president is shot. Barnes tackles a bearded man. There’s a distant explosion. Barnes looks at Howard’s footage. There’s another explosion, this time right in the middle of the plaza.

And then… the movie rewinds itself back to noon, and plays the whole thing out from another perspective. And another. And another. By the time this B-movie “Rashomon” has played out from the point of view of Rex, of Barnes, of Howard, and of the president himself, the audience is more than ready to move on to the next bit of business. (At the L.A. press screening, one anonymous voice moaned “Oh GOD” at the fifth rewinding.)

The middle part of the movie is where we find out how all the pieces fit together, and it’s the one smart part of “Vantage Point.” The intricacies of the assassination and bombings wind up being so interesting, that you’re almost ready to forgive the clunky and gimmicky opening passage.

But then we get to the last part, which mostly features a) a high-speed car chase that goes on and on (the screening audience laughed later when it was revealed that the end point of the chase was just seven blocks from where it started) and b) Whitaker’s character running after Secret Service guys chasing a suspect for no apparent reason. If you questioned why the “Cloverfield” kids kept their camera running while they were fleeing from monsters, you’ll really have a field day with Whitaker’s inserting himself into the action for no good reason whatsoever.

The performances are reasonably adequate, given how little depth any of these characters have. Kudos to the always-remarkable Sigourney Weaver for owning all 58 of her years and still looking dynamite, and to James LeGros, as a presidential advisor, for straight-facedly uttering a ludicrous line that can’t be shared here without spoiling a plot development. If you see the movie, you’ll spot it.

U.K. television vet Pete Travis, making his feature directorial debut, has a talent for the slam-bang, but the film’s occasional moments of exhilaration get drowned in the repetition of the first sequence and the ludicrous length of the car chase at the denouement. Whether the trouble comes from fellow first-timer Barry L. Levy’s script (or from meddling creative types who ran roughshod over these two tyros), “Vantage Point” feels like a missed opportunity.