A geopolitical thriller shot in the style of Groundhog Day by way of Paul Greengrass, with apologies to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon: Vantage Point might sound intriguing on paper but it's all gimmick and not a lot of substance.

The gimmick is admittedly neat. An assassination attempt on the President of the United States (a shifty William Hurt) in the Spanish town of Salamanca, and the subsequent chaos as a terrorist bomb rips through the crowd, is witnessed by eight strangers, each with a different, subjective point of view. Each time the film rewinds back to 11.59am, a new piece of the puzzle slots into place. And what a complex web of deceit is revealed.

The key players are Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid, roasted to the colour of a coffee bean), a secret Service agent on his first day back at work after taking a bullet in the line of duty; his colleague Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox); an American tourist (Forest Whitaker); a TV news producer (Sigourney Weaver); and a local policeman (Eduardo Noriega).

Vantage Point is not unentertaining, but there's a clunky, unwieldy quality to the way it employs the device. By the third rewind, the audience in the preview I attended were restless. By the fourth they were groaning and catcalling. To justify dragging the audience repeatedly back to the beginning of the film, the screenplay piles elaborate twist upon twist; doublecross upon doublecross. The narrative contrivances get more desperate and audacious with each new character's viewpoint. If truly great thrillers are constructed with the elegance of an impeccably tailored jacket, Vantage Point is like a badly knitted jumper: full of holes and prone to disintegrate if you follow the wrong thread.

Quaid and Whitaker represent honesty and decency in the face of a terrorist onslaught, and it's a close call as to which of them gives the more preposterous performance. My money is on Whitaker, whose good-hearted everyman snatches infants from the jaws of death and pelts after the secret services like an over-eager boy Scout hoping to fight the bad guys. When it comes to the terrorists themselves, the film treads carefully. No religion is mentioned, no allegiance to any organisation is suggested. The closest we get is the speculation that one character “may have had ties with the Mujahidin”.

What elevates the film from disposable trash to enjoyable hokum is a pace that, despite the false starts inherent in the structure, rarely lets up, and a high-octane car chase that hurtles around the genteel streets scattering tourists and their ice-creams with abandon.

12A, 90mins

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