Vantage Point

U.S. President Henry Ashton (William Hurt) attends a political summit in Salamanca, Spain to promote an international treaty. Displayed with eight differing viewpoints, an assassination attempt on the president occurs, relayed in a time span of 23 minutes. Each time the events unfold from the beginning, a new vantage point is shown revealing additional details, which ultimately completes the story of what actually took place during the incident.

From the first vantage point, GNN producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver), directs various media personnel from a mobile television studio as the president arrives at the gathering. Mayor De Soto (Jose Carlos Rodriguez) delivers a short speech and then introduces the president, who is shot twice as he greets the crowd from the podium. An explosion outside the plaza soon follows. Moments later, the podium itself is destroyed by a secondary explosion, killing and injuring numerous people. As the smoke clears, GNN reporter Angie Jones (Zoe Saldana) is seen lying dead in the rubble.

The second vantage point follows Secret Service agents Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox). Barnes notices a curtain fluttering in the window of a nearby building that was allegedly vacated. He also observes American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker) filming the audience. After the president is shot, Barnes tackles a man rushing to the podium named Enrique (Eduardo Noriega). Taylor pursues a lead to a potential assassin. Following the second explosion, Barnes barges into the GNN production studio and asks to view their footage. He calls Taylor, who reports the direction of the suspected assassin's escape route. Barnes then views an image on one of the camera's live feeds that startles him and prompts him to run out.

In the third vantage point, Enrique, who claims to be a Spanish police officer assigned to protecting the mayor of Salamanca, sees his girlfriend Veronica (Ayelet Zurer), being embraced by a stranger and overhears them speaking about meeting under an overpass. When he confronts her, Veronica assures Enrique of her love for him as he hands her a bag. When the president is shot, Enrique rushes onto the stage to protect the mayor, but is tackled by Barnes. While being detained, he witnesses Veronica toss the bag he gave her under the podium, causing the second explosion. Enrique escapes as the agents who previously had him in custody, mount a chase while firing shots in his direction, failing to subdue him. Enrique confronts an unseen individual at the overpass and asks if he is surprised to see him still alive.

The fourth vantage point revolves around Howard Lewis who is chatting with a man called Sam (Said Taghmaoui), while a little girl named Anna (Alicia Zapien), bumps into him and drops her ice cream. Later, Lewis notices Barnes looking at the curtain fluttering in the window of a nearby building, and captures the footage with his camcorder. Following the second explosion at the podium, Lewis chases Enrique and the pursuing Secret Service agents. At the overpass, Lewis views the pair of agents from afar shooting in the direction of Enrique as he greets an individual in a police uniform under the overpass. Seriously wounded, Enrique falls to the ground. Lewis sees Anna who had earlier become separated from her mother, trying to cross a busy intersection. An ambulance races down the road about to hit Anna, as Lewis runs out to save her.

The fifth vantage point begins as President Ashton, having been informed of a credible assassination threat, has returned to his hotel room with his aides while his body double proceeds to the gathering in the plaza. The first explosion, which occurs just outside the hotel, is revealed to be a device detonated by a suicide bomber disguised as a bellhop. Seconds later, a masked assailant bursts into the president's room, shoots his advisers and then proceeds in abducting Ashton.

By the sixth vantage point, terrorist Suarez, previously seen as Sam; shoots Ashton's body double using a remote-controlled automatic rifle placed in an adjacent window next to the one with the fluttering curtain that had drawn Barnes' attention earlier. The rifle is retrieved by Taylor, whom Barnes sees leaving the scene wearing a Spanish policeman's uniform on one of the GNN live feeds, even though he tells Barnes that he's in pursuit of the assassin over the phone. Barnes realizes Taylor is actually part of the terror plot. The man Enrique saw embracing Veronica is revealed to be sharpshooter Javier (Edgar Ramirez), whose brother is being held hostage to ensure Javier's cooperation with the terrorists. Javier kills the guards and aides within the hotel, and kidnaps the president.

Ashton is later placed in an ambulance with Suarez and Veronica disguised as medics. Javier joins Taylor in a police car to a planned rendezvous at the overpass. Barnes commandeers a car and chases Taylor and Javier. Barnes however, gets into a collision with a truck, allowing the duo to escape. At the overpass, Enrique, who did not die in the blast at the podium as intended, confronts Javier and Taylor. Enraged, Javier shoots Enrique, mistakenly believing he had knowledge of his kidnapped brother's whereabouts. Javier is then shot and killed by Taylor when he demands to be brought to his brother, who had been killed earlier by Suarez. Enrique dies of his wounds as Barnes reaches the scene on foot firing several rounds at Taylor, who attempts to flee. After crashing his car, a critically injured Taylor is dragged out by Barnes. He orders Taylor to reveal where the president has been taken, but Taylor dies. Meanwhile, Ashton regains consciousness in the ambulance and attacks Veronica, distracting her and Suarez just as Anna runs into their path. Suarez swerves causing the ambulance to flip over just as Lewis pulls Anna out of its way. Barnes runs to the ambulance where he sees Veronica lying dead. He shoots Suarez dead and rescues the president.

This is a wonderful movie but I strongly recommend watching it from beginning to end. It can be hard to follow if you miss any part of it. I loved this movie though. It definitely made you think "Who did it?" just like in the game of clue.

Abduction the Movie

This was a star studded movie. I strongly recommend you get a copy of this movie to watch. I also like the soundtrack to Abduction. Here is what Abduction is about I hope you like it as much as I did.
Nathan Harper (Taylor Lautner) is an 18-year old who lives with his "parents", Kevin (Jason Isaacs) and Mara (Maria Bello). He has been having recurring nightmares throughout most of his youth, and was recommended by his school counselor to consult psychiatrist Dr. Geraldine "Geri" Bennett (Sigourney Weaver), to discover why.
During sociology class one morning, Nathan is partnered with his next-door neighbor and longtime friend Karen Murphy (Lily Collins) for a school assignment about missing children.
While doing the homework together, Karen finds a website that, through age-progression technology, shows what children would look like as they got older. Nathan discovers that a boy named Steven Price, aged approximately 3 years when photographed 15 years ago, would look exactly like him in the present day.
He goes to the basement, where his childhood items are kept and also finds the same shirt that 4-year-old Steven in the picture is wearing. With the confirmation of a particular stain on that shirt's sleeve, he suddenly realizes that he and Steven are the same person.
Very curious and interested now, Nathan contacts the website's operator, unaware that the operator is actually a Serbian terrorist. The man reports the call back to his commander, Nikola Kozlow (Michael Nyqvist), who deploys two agents to Nathan's house. They attack Nathan's parents, who yell at him to run, before being murdered themselves. During the attack process, the house is destroyed by a bomb and Nathan and Karen escape the blast by jumping into the pool. They attempt to call the police, but the call is intercepted by CIA operative Frank Burton (Alfred Molina), who tells Nathan that he's in danger. Frank then immediately sends a team to hunt him down.
But before that team arrives, "Psychiatrist" Dr. Bennett appears and tells Nathan that agent Burton cannot be trusted and advises Nathan to go with her instead. During the car trip, she reveals that Nathan's biological father, Martin (Dermot Mulroney) (whose face we never actually get to see in totality), is an ex-CIA agent who stole a list from Kozlow with the names of corrupt CIA operatives and agents. Kozlow had purposely created the website in order to locate Nathan and use him as a bargaining chip to force Martin to return that list.
Having intercepted Nathan's call, Kozlow's men now appear on the scene. Dr. Bennett tells Nathan to memorize a safe-house address in Arlington, Virginia and to make a dash for it. Before they leave, Dr. Bennett warns him that he can only trust his father and another man named Paul Rasmus. The two fugitives jump out of Dr. Bennett's moving car and, to facilitate their escape as well as her own, the psychiatrist creates a diversion for the Serbian pursuers by causing several fuel drums to blow up at a road-construction site.
Nathan and Karen arrive at the safe house where Nathan finds his (real) father's cellphone, including a photo and an address of his biological mother, Lorna Price (Elisabeth Röhm). The two youths discover that she is dead. They then proceed to visit her grave and Karen notices that fresh flowers had been placed at her tombstone. So together the couple go to nearby caretaker's office, where Karen plies her feminine charms and asks about any recent cemetery visitors. Mollified, the caretaker reveals that the last visitor was a Paul Rasmus from Nebraska. Nathan and Karen then elatedly purchase a train ticket and head to Nebraska.
But Kozlow's right-hand man follows them by also boarding the same train, armed with a roll of duct tape in his pocket. When Karen leaves to get food, he kidnaps her, ties her up and goes back to their cabin to engage Nathan in a fight. Nathan eventually overpowers the Serbian and throws the man off the train. But not before he grabs his phone.
Meanwhile, Karen manages to free herself, using glass shards to cut the sticky duct tape from her mouth. She then runs back to the cabin to reunite with Nathan. Nathan pulls the train's emergency braking system. The train comes to a halt. They step off the train and run into the forest, with the train's protesting officials in a half-hearted pursuit.
Agent Burton and his men come across the Serbian's ejected body at the railroad tracks, and initiate a chase for the two young fugitives who he says couldn't have gotten too far away. The CIA agents manage to catch up with the two in the woods and agent Burton convinces them that the CIA just wants to help. He coaxes the two by inviting them for a burger and a shake at a nearby diner. At the restaurant, Burton reveals to Nathan about the meaning of the encrypted list on his father's phone and which he had taken with him from the safe house in Virginia.
Nathan now furtively checks the phone and sees the encrypted list scroll by on the screen. (The list also happens to contain CIA agent Burton's name.) But before Burton can react, Kozlow's men attack the diner with a barrage of bullets from assault rifles, killing several of Burton's men.
During the melee, Burton and his partner, Agent Burns (Antonique Smith) fire back and kill all of Kozlow's men, and Nathan and Karen happen to escape. Now the cellphone of Kozlow's partner-in-crime rings. Nathan answers it. Kozlow threatens that he plans to kidnap Karen's parents and will kill them if Nathan doesn't give him the list. Nathan agrees, but says that he will choose the time and place of the exchange himself. Kozlow agrees.
By this time, Nathan realizes that his nightmares had been due to repressed memories of his mother Lorna being murdered by Kozlow, while she was trying to protect him. (The murder scene at the beginning of the movie, with him hiding under the bed at the age of 3, witnessing it all -- now becomes clear to him.)
Nathan's plan is to give Kozlow the list at a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, but he tells Karen that he actually intends to kill Kozlow with the gun he had found in the same drawer as his mother's photo. But now he suddenly receives a call from his real father, Martin, who is also at the stadium. Martin warns him not to give Kozlow the list under any circumstances. But Nathan ignores his advice, and reaches for the gun to shoot Kozlow. However, the Serbian had outwitted Nathan by stealing Nathan's gun and now forces Nathan to hand over the list.
Nathan eludes Kozlow and escapes by sliding down a glass escalator's roof, with Kozlow in heavy pursuit. But Martin calls Nathan on his cell and tells him to lure Kozlow to an open area outside the stadium. Nathan does so, and at the very moment when Kozlow prepares to kill Nathan, Martin kills Kozlow with a precise sniper shot through the heart, fired from a nearby parking garage.
Agent Burton's men appear on the scene and surround Nathan. Burton tells his boss that he will hand over the list after it has been decrypted at CIA headquarters. But his superior reveals that Martin has warned them that Burton would attempt that very thing in order to remove his own name. They detain Burton for a thorough "debriefing".
Martin then calls Nathan one last time and apologizes for not having been around to be a true "Dad" to him, but that he will always be watching over Nathan. Nathan reunites with Karen and Dr. Bennett, who tells him that she has arranged for him to live with her until he graduates. After that, he can move out to attend college or follow any of his other dreams. Nathan thanks her and finally leaves with Karen for a long-overdue actual date. The story ends with the two of them sitting inside an empty stadium which they now have all to themselves.