Word: quaid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid) is the kind of guy who casts a thick fog - a regular pea souper - over memories of our bright college years. He's the kind of teacher who routinely visits contempt on his students, contumely on his colleagues and a catastrophic self-involvement on any woman crazy enough to contemplate a relationship with him. Needless to say, he has accomplished nothing to justify his arrogance; he only has an excuse - he continues to mourn the death of his wife...
...movie really runs on Dennis Quaid's misanthropic conviction. He's one of those second-tier stars who has generally not been treated well by Hollywood. But whether he's called upon to play mulish, churlish or just to do some hard-charging action, we always sense an underlying decency in him - he has a good soldier quality that can be very appealing. In a way, his work is emblematic of the movie as a whole. There's nothing world shattering about Smart People. No one is ever going to call it a "must see" movie...
...Early on, we learn that Secret Service Agent Thomas Barnes (Quaid) had taken a bullet for Ashton a year ago, so this is a least the second assassination attempt during the his regime. Ashton, though, is no ninny; stern and balding, he has the gruff gravitas of Fred Thompson or Rudy Giuliani, if either of them had got past their Presidential-primary gaffes and into the White House. And he is ready with heroic quotes for any occasion. When his adviser pleads, "Mr. President, we have to act strong," Ashton snaps back, "No, we have to be strong...
...this fourth or fifth rerun of the events, we have determined that Vantage Point has ambitions no higher than making the audience's collective pulse race as fast as the car Quaid will be maneuvering breathlessly through rush-hour traffic. 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...
...plausibility is the concern of the 9/11 Commission, not of audiences looking for an exciting time at a February popcorn picture. Their vantage point isn't above the action, where they can dispassionately parse the plot and solve the mystery. It's behind the wheel of Dennis Quaid's churning vehicle, which sends innocent pedestrians sprawling as he pursues the bad guys. He's Mel Gibson as Madman Martin Briggs, and he's not in a sophisticated political parable like The Manchurian Candidate but the latest unofficial remake of Lethal Weapon...