Critical response On
Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 34% based on 158 reviews, with an average rating of 4.9/10. The consensus critics reads, "
Vantage Point has an interesting premise that is completely undermined by fractured storytelling and wooden performances."
Metacritic assigned the film a
weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 32 critics, which it describes as "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. "
Vantage Point is at its best in the early going when it focuses on the Secret Service agent, whom Quaid plays with the intensity of a man trying to blast through doubt and fear by staying very, very angry. Quaid is so good that his performance ends up promising what the script can't deliver - a blazing portrait of an American professional, the sunburned man of action, whose inner torment can't stop him." wrote
Mick LaSalle of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
Mick LaSalle in the
San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film "has a fractured and frustrating narrative." Unlike
Akira Kurosawa's classic film
Rashomon, which is structured around multiple retellings of the same event, LaSalle characterizes
Vantage Point as "fairly pedestrian" and describes the multiple perspectives as "arbitrary, a gimmick."
Claudia Puig of
USA Today said the "various viewpoints don't quite link up" and the concept "seems initially intriguing, but it gets old after about the fifth time." She believed that like "many action-adventure movies that are short on plot intricacies but long on gimmick and explosives, too much is given away in the trailer." William Arnold of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer believed the film was "flat-out one of the more exciting and original gut-busters that Hollywood has produced in many a month. It's virtually all action, but the action is never mindless and it is full of marvelous surprises every step of the way."
Richard Corliss of
Time said that "
Vantage Point scored with surprisingly robustness at the wickets, outperforming the predictions of industry analysts and seeming likely to be the weekend's No. 1 attraction." He said the film is "best seen as straightforward, sometimes harrowing melodrama, packed with mistaken identities, beautiful villains, a kindly tourist who can outrace the bad guys, and a lost little girl whom the film brazenly sends onto a highway full of speeding cars."
David Denby of
The New Yorker said, "
Vantage Point is something remarkable—the ultimate case, perhaps, of a movie as a big whirling machine." Writing for
The Boston Globe,
Ty Burr said the "rewind/retell gambit quickly grows tiresome" and the result of the film was "both clever and stupid - an interesting feat."
James Berardinelli, writing for
ReelViews, called the film a "fast-paced motion picture that fails the 'reality test' but maintains a certain intensity for its entire running length. It's entertaining in the same way that an episode of
24 is entertaining, but without the lead character shouting 'dammit!' every five minutes." Scott Foundas of
The Village Voice said the film encompassed "multiple perspectives" that "are all foreplay, it turns out, for an orgiastic third-act car chase during which the movie's story threads converge in a way that makes
Paul Haggis seem like a master of Balzacian realism." John Anderson of
The Washington Post, stated that Akira Kurosawa's
Rashomon "made it chic for filmmakers to create multiple-perspective movies and, since they aren't Kurosawa, drive us crazy." Similarly, Justin Chang wrote in
Variety that the film circles "endlessly around a political assassination attempt and its violently contrived aftermath, the film proves every bit as crude, nerve-grinding and finally unsalvageable as the car accidents it keeps inflicting on its characters." He said the original holdover slated release for the film in 2007 by
Sony was "unlikely to stop traffic around multiplexes despite its attention-getting cast, especially when poor word of mouth takes hold."
Owen Gleiberman writing for
Entertainment Weekly thought the film was "a pulse-pounding technological showman whose high-strung, quick-cut style might be described as
JFK meets
Paul Greengrass meets
Jerry Bruckheimer. That said, it's not the plot that thickens — it's the pulp." He believed it had "a gripping premise that, for a while, at least, is grippingly executed."
Box office The film premiered in cinemas on February 22, 2008, in wide release throughout the U.S.. During its opening weekend, the film opened in 1st place grossing $22.9 million at 3,149 cinemas. The film's revenue dropped by 44% in its second week of release, earning $12.8 million. For that particular weekend, the film fell to 2nd place and screened in 3,150 theaters. The film
Semi-Pro unseated
Vantage Point to open in first place, grossing $15.1 million. During its final week in release,
Vantage Point opened in 25th place with $234,042 in revenue. The film went on to top out in the US at $72.3 million through a 9-week theatrical run. Internationally, the film took in an additional $78.9 million for a combined worldwide total of $151.2 million.
Awards Following its cinematic release in 2008,
Vantage Point won the
Golden Trailer Award for
Best Thriller. It also garnered a nomination from the
Taurus World Stunt Awards in the category of
Best Work With A Vehicle in 2009. ==TV series==