DVD: Eight perspectives on terror attack

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), August 1, 2008

Byline: By DAMON SMITH Film critic

Vantage Point (Cert 12, 86 mins, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, Action/Thriller, also available to buy DVD pounds 19.99/Blu-ray pounds 24.99)

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, Eduardo Noriego, Edgar Ramirez, Ayelete Zurer, Bruce McGill.

PRESIDENT Ashton (Hurt) travels to Spain to make a keynote address on the global threat of terrorism. As he approaches the lectern, two shots ring out and Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes (Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Fox) rush to the President's aid.

Thomas notices American tourist Howard Lewis (Whitaker) digitally recording the incident.

They hastily review the footage, discovering too late that the shooter has left another surprise for the Secret Service. Meanwhile, veteran television news producer Rex Brooks (Weaver) watches in horror as her reporter Angie Jones (Saldana) is caught up in the chaos. Vantage Point is an intricate action-thriller, which replays a devastating terrorist attack from eight perspectives to reveal the truth, one fragment at a time.

Rating: ****

Pathology (Cert 18, 93 mins, Entertainment In Video, Thriller)

Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Michael Weston, Lauren Lee Smith, Dan Callahan, Johnny Whitworth, Alyssa Milano, Keir O'Donnell.

Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia headlines this medical thriller from director Marc Schoelermann and screenwriting duo Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. The prognosis is gloomy: the script takes a scalpel to in-depth characterisation and Ventimiglia struggles to get beneath the skin of his amoral (anti)-hero who gets his kicks by playing God. Brilliant student Ted Grey (Ventimiglia) is the wonderkid of his class at Harvard Medical School, earning himself a place on a pathology program at Philadelphia University Hospital alongside many of the best interns in the country. Befriended by creepy Jake Gallo (Weston) and his posse, Ted is invited to take part in a deadly game: to kill one of the degenerates in the local community and challenge other members of the gang to deduce the method of execution, avoiding detection by the police and the coroner. As the stakes are raised, Ted realises that his some of his classmates intend to make him the next victim and he will have to use all of his guile to avoid becoming another nametag on the mortuary slab. Pathology will appeal to fans of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its ilk.

Rating: **

How She Move (Cert 12, 87 mins, Paramount Home Entertainment, Drama/Romance, also available to buy DVD pounds 15.99)

Starring: Rutina Wesley, Tre Armstrong, Dwain Murphy, Brennan Gademans, Cle Bennett, Kevin Duhaney.

Busting to some of the same moves as Stomp The Yard - albeit with far more urban spit and a lot less Hollywood polish - Ian Iqbal Rashid's coming of age story suffers a little, arriving a couple of weeks after the toned midriffs of Step Up 2 The Streets. However, despite some weak characterisation and a flabby middle section that noticeably treads water before the adrenaline-pumping final dance-off, How She Move has a sweetness and raw charm which is so often lacking in the genre.

Newcomer Rutina Wesley is certainly a star of the future.

Rating: ***

P2 (Cert 18, 94 mins, High Fliers Film, Horror/Thriller)

Starring: Rachel Nichols, Wes Bentley, Philip Akin, Miranda Edwards, Jamie Jones.

Named after the level of the subterranean multi-storey structure where most of the film unfolds, P2 is as vacant of creativity and invention as its poorly lit setting. Franck Khalfoun's film is gratuitously violent and brutal, not least the horrific fate that befalls one of the co-workers of workaholic executive Angela (Nichols), who drunkenly gropes her at the office party.

Rating: **

eatures@examiner.co.uk

CAPTION(S):

TERROR STRUCK: Pandemonium breaks out when shots ring out as the US President rises to speak about terrorism - but this is film land in the new thriller Vantage Point featuring Matthew Fox, William Hurt and Dennis Quaid