Packed with high-speed car chases, video game-like homicides and a twisted, tangled and unbelievably confusing plot, Vantage Point is 90 minutes of complete insanity. The action scenes are over the top, the concept is overcomplicated and the acting is overdramatic.

Basically, Vantage Point is an action-movie lover's dream.

 The movie, like any good thrill ride, gets off to a quick start. The President of the United States (William Hurt) arrives in Salamanca, Spain, to give a monumental speech in an effort to combat global terrorism. As he walks to the podium, a gun fires, and the president goes down. Minutes later, a bomb explodes, killing hundreds and leaving the audience shocked and confused as to exactly what happened.

No problem, though. That is only the first vantage point. Rewind...

And then the scene begins again, this time seen through the eyes of secret service agent Barnes (Dennis Quaid), one of the president's security men. This time, the audience is given a new vantage point, some more action and a second piece to the puzzle.

Rewind...

While director Pete Travis's idea of repeating the scene six (yes, six) times incites a few groans and nasty comments ("We already saw this!") from impatient moviegoers, it nonetheless captivates most people in the jam-packed theater. By the third run-through of the assassination, every person in the theater knows the exact point at which the gunshot is fired, yet nobody dares turn away from the screen, fearing that an important clue might be missed.

Once the assassination of the president has been told and retold--and this process takes up about the first 50 minutes of the movie--the first plot twist occurs, and then more twists keep piling on. Eventually, the plot itself becomes completely unbelievable, seemingly dreamt up by an imaginative third-grader rather than carefully planned by a professional screenwriter. Flying bodies, flipping cars and wild chases become so common that the audience begins to release its grasp on reality and let the insane world of Vantage Point take over. It's at this point that the movie really gets good; when you let yourself believe that anything can happen, you find yourself on the edge of your seat.

The acting in Vantage Point is overdramatic at points, but exciting overall. Forest Whitaker, who plays an American tourist and provides his own unique vantage point, delivers the best performance by far, and Matthew Fox, one of the president's security men, is exciting as well. Additionally, the supporting cast members, made up of actors and actresses from Spain, Venezuela, Israel and France, turn in notably convincing performances in what is, for some of them, their debut in an American film.