War without end

Vantage Point follows terror war and succeeds as entertainment | Megan Basham

Sony Pictures

Sometimes critics, especially around Oscar time, can focus so much on filmmaking as art, they lose sight of the service they're actually rendering readers. They forget that a movie doesn't have to plumb the depths of the human soul or explore the geopolitical realities of our modern world to be worth recommending. It doesn't even have to be great. It just has to be entertaining.

This seems to be the case with Vantage Point, a thriller that unravels an assassination attempt on the president through the perspectives of six different witnesses. The audiences that have boosted it to the top of the box office seem to get it. Film reviewers, most of whom roundly thumped the movie for not doing enough to put the War on Terror in context, didn't. This critic sides with the audience.