Vantage Point **

"Vantage Point" is a mildly entertaining action movie constructed around the interlocking stories of various viewers and participants in an attempted assassination of the American president at a conference in Salamanca, Spain. The first, and for me the most successful, vantage point is the straight news feed as news producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) directs her reporter and cameramen from a trailer just outside the Plaza Mayor. We get backstory information on the president's security detail, and some quick banter as Rex keeps her show on track. We see President Ashton (William Hurt) arrive and go to the podium, where he is shot shortly after being introduced. The crowd starts to flee, and Secret Service agents Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Taylor (Mathew Fox) spring into action as the president is rushed into an ambulance. A muffled explosion is heard from somewhere nearby. Then the podium explodes. Many people are hurt or not moving.

Then the movie does a quick rewind to twenty minutes earlier, and we see the same events from the perspective of a lone American tourist (Forest Whitaker), who is video-taping the ceremony. There are three more perspectives to come, as we gradually are let in on the people behind the attacks, and their various motives. The effect is additive as each perspective gives us more information, and more action. It's not really like Kurosawa's famous "Rashomon," where the various eye witness accounts are hopelessly contradictory. Rather, these accounts fill in the story, while advancing the action, until a final climactic car chase (what else?) through the narrow streets and sidewalks of Salamanca. In "Rashomon" the viewpoints served as a structure for the examination of the nature of truth and remembrance. Here it's just a device that is, untimately, pointless.

It's clear a lot of thought went into staging the action sequences. Unfortunately, the story of the perpetrators and victims is a mishmash of motiveless malignancy, blackmail, and betrayal that doesn't bear much scrutiny. What we have are stock characters all, down to the lost and frightened little girl who keeps turning up at the most dangerous moments. Mexican locations in Cuernavaca, Puebla, and Mexico City stand in well for Spain. Quaid and Fox turn in workmanlike performances. The final car chase is too long by half, but if you're looking for an action movie that doesn't ask much of you, "Vantage Point" could be your ticket.

Rated PG-13. 90 minutes. Directed by Pete Travis. Written by Barry L. Levy. Produced by Neil H. Moritz. Distributed in the U.S. by Columbia Pictures. Principal actors: Dennis Quaid, Mathew Fox, Forest Whitaker, Said Taghmaoui, Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramirez, Ayalet Zurer, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt.