Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
40
(32 sources)
40
(32 sources)
-
83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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. Read Full Review » -
75
Charlotte Observer
Three-fourths of a terrific thriller, which in this dreary run of winter movies seemed like clear spring water to this parched traveler. The setup is so riveting, the suspense so carefully prolonged, that I didn't mind when it unraveled into lunacy near the end. Read Full Review » -
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Because Vantage Point is really a concept movie, the actors are not much more than pawns on the chessboard: They move one square at a time. Read Full Review » -
70
The New Yorker
Is it art? Not remotely. But, up to the final scenes, it's a tremendous piece of engineering. After all, the narratives have to synch up visually, which can't be easy to manage. And the hurtling force of Vantage Point is fun to watch. Read Full Review » -
70
Time
The movie 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. It's as if Dakota Fanning had wandered onto the streets of Ronin. Read Full Review » -
70
-
67
-
63
ReelViews
It's 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. Read Full Review » -
63
Premiere
When Vantage Point is staying with Quaid and Fox as they hunt the suspected assassins (including the arrestingly beautiful Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer) it's a perfectly serviceable thriller with high production values and some better-than-average car chases. Read Full Review » -
60
Empire
Some okay thrills with good performances and some smarts. But the last reel plunge spoils things. Myth for the new millennium: any average, out-of-shape middle-aged Yank, including the President, can get in a punch-up with a few well-armed, super-trained terrorists, and win. Read Full Review » -
58
Entertainment Weekly
Vantage Point starts to slide off the rails when it tracks a tourist (Forest Whitaker) and his trusty camcorder; instead of Zapruder-like intrigue, the episode has him running around like an agent in a rote thriller. Read Full Review » -
50
Chicago Tribune
With a less pedigreed international cast the whole thing would be a disaster, as opposed to a chilly new kind of disaster film. Read Full Review » -
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Quaid and Whitaker, who serve more or less as the designated humans in this clockwork contraption of a film, are capable in corny roles, but otherwise Vantage Point is as stuffed with cardboard performances and expositional speeches as any seventies disaster flick. Read Full Review » -
50
TV Guide
At a certain point, its sheer can you top this excess, and credibility files out the window three's no reason to continue paying attention. Read Full Review » -
50
-
50
The New York Times
This is competent if completely impersonal filmmaking of a familiar type that finds the usual allotment of famous, or at least famous enough, actors. Read Full Review » -
42
Baltimore Sun
An overly gimmicky and fatally repetitive terrorist thriller that quickly wears out its welcome. Read Full Review » -
42
The Onion (A.V. Club)
The loaded cast does what it can with the paper-thin characterizations, but Vantage Point gets hijacked early by its high-concept premise, and it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers thriller with the numbers out of order. Read Full Review » -
42
Christian Science Monitor
How can we take this doomsday scenario seriously when we keep waiting for Bruce Willis to rise from the ashes? Read Full Review » -
40
Los Angeles Times
The truth is that two other films with Greengrass' name on them, "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum," have spoiled us for this kind of thriller filmmaking, and stacked against that, Vantage Point doesn't have a chance. Read Full Review » -
38
Rolling Stone
By the end, Vantage Point is such a unholy mess of drooling sentiment and sloppy loose ends that you'll hate yourself for being suckered in. Read Full Review » -
38
Boston Globe
The result is a movie that's both clever and stupid - an interesting feat. Read Full Review » -
38
New York Post
Throws in enough hurtling bodies, screaming bullets and totaled cars that it at least holds your interest, so it passes the worth-watching-if-you're-stuck-on-an-airplane test. Read Full Review » -
30
Washington Post
Although it was held back by the studio for about a year, someone apparently came to the inevitable conclusion that no amount of ripening time was going to help this gimmicky and ultimately harebrained movie. Read Full Review » -
30
-
30
The Hollywood Reporter
Straight out of the slice-and-dice school of filmmaking, Vantage Point fractures chronology and perspective in a vain attempt to disguise its flimsiness. Read Full Review » -
30
Film Threat
What you won't be able to ignore is the ridiculous way Vantage Point's brings everything to an end. Read Full Review » -
30
Village Voice
Produced by Paul Greengrass, and conceived as something of a companion film to his own "Bloody Sunday," there wasn't a moment in "Omagh" that rang false. There's not a single one in Vantage Point that rings true. Read Full Review » -
25
San Francisco Chronicle
Vantage Point has nothing going on. There's no artistic, philosophical or even jolly entertainment reason for adopting this strategy. It's just arbitrary, a gimmick. Read Full Review » -
20
Austin Chronicle
If you can work your way past Vantage Point's goofy casting that places a bland, blank-eyed Hurt in the White House, then I suppose you can manage to forgive this "Rashomon" rip-off's other glaring idiosyncrasies, of which there are many. Read Full Review » -
10
Wall Street Journal
Why, beating the audience about the ears, eyes and brain with essentially the same sequence of events from eight characters' points of view, none of which adds much more than deafening hysteria and identically dreadful music. The filmmakers seem to have missed the point that each re-enactment in "Rashomon" provides new and conflicting information. It makes you wonder if they studied the wrong movie. Maybe they rented "Rush Hour," or a video on Rosh Hashanah. Read Full Review » -
10
Variety
A 23-minute movie dragged out, via some narrative gimmickry, to a punishing hour and a half. Read Full Review »
You Say
click on a star to rate
