Subject: Review: Minority Report (2002)

From: Mark R. Leeper <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 18:48:23 -0000

MINORITY REPORT
               (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

    CAPSULE: Steven Spielberg adapts a story by Philip 
    K. Dick to create a marvelously faceted and incredibly 
    dark vision of the future.  Murder has been eliminated 
    by use of mutants' psychic powers.  MINORITY REPORT is 
    fast-paced, yet still full of ideas.  This is probably 
    a better science fiction film in a more complex society 
    than was BLADERUNNER (also based on a story by Philip 
    K. Dick).  Rating: 9 (0 to 10), +3 (-4 to +4)

When most science fiction films are set in the future the approach 
is simple.  You have funny suits for the men, revealing fashions 
for the women, throw in a funny-looking car here and there, and 
show as little of the world as possible.  That last part is 
desperately important.  Think how much explanation phrases like 
"dot-com failure" would require to make it understandable to a 
1950 audience.  Seeing an accurate view of the world fifty-two 
years from now would be confusing and demanding.  Steven Spielberg 
shows us a world just that far in the future and is not afraid to 
make the view confusing and demanding.

Spielberg has been accused of making manipulative and heavy-handed 
films that are just a bit simplistic and spell things out for the 
viewer.  Certainly nobody can accuse MINORITY REPORT of being 
simple.  In it Spielberg has told a story more than half a century 
in the future that is every bit as complicated and demanding as 
being dropped into the future would be.  This film is a genuine 
piece of future extrapolation.  Even written science fiction set 
in the future does not require this degree of thought about the 
future.  Written science fiction does not allow the reader to put 
his head into a scene and look around at the world the way a wide-
screen movie does.  While some of Spielberg's future seems 
altogether impossible (e.g. psychic elimination of crime), and 
some seem more than fifty-two years away (cars adapted to highways 
that that are vertical for long stretches), Spielberg had taken 
head-on questions of where computing is going.  What will 
advertising be like in fifty-two years?  What will language be 
like?

The year is 2054.  It has been six years since a murder has been 
successfully committed in the Washington DC area.  Why?  Because 
three mutant psychics, "pre-cogs" they are called, are kept in a 
state of constant sleep as their minds are probed see all 
potential murders before they happen.  The police get this 
information in time to avert the killings.  But apart from the 
constitutional issue of prior restraint, there is always the 
question of how one knows for sure the averted crime really would 
have happened.  Tom Cruise plays John Alderton in the police 
Department of Precrime and a firm believer in the system he 
enforces.  He will soon have reason to doubt the system.

Philip K. Dick raised these issues in his novelette "Minority 
Report."  The point of Dick's story was that knowledge of the 
future changes the future so that multiple pre-cogs might see 
multiple alternate futures.  Apparently even Spielberg thought 
that would be a tough notion to transfer to the screen so he 
simplified the concept and the importance of the "minority report" 
from which the film takes its name.

MINORITY REPORT is not just a summer fluff film.  It is hard work 
to follow everything that is going on and to pick up all the 
interesting details in a world where the cartoon characters on a 
cereal box actually dance and sing and store ads recognize 
customers and know their purchase record on sight.  MINORITY 
REPORT is the most detailed creation of a future society since 
BLADERUNNER, which incidentally was also based on the writings of 
Dick.  Here Spielberg uses the ideas of Dick, the pacing of an 
Alfred Bester story, and the cynicism of Frederic Pohl and Cyril 
Kornbluth.  The intelligence flags only near the end with Dick's 
ideas being replaced by a more cliched plotline.  The payoff is 
not the end of the film but a shank that is so dense with ideas.

Spielberg greatly controls the images on the screen.  Scenes are 
intentionally too complex to be understood on one viewing.  To 
create a distancing effect he turns way down the color values so 
the visuals are halfway between color and monochrome.  It is a 
mood device and works to reasonable effect.

This is a long film that that is hard work for the viewer.  It 
makes few concessions to explanations.  At one point a character 
says "I'm tired of the future."  The casual viewer may feel the 
same way.  Or he may just ignore the details and see this as an 
action film.  But action films are many and extrapolations like 
this one few.  I rate MINORITY REPORT a 9 on the 0 to 10 scale and 
a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.

Minor spoiler....Minor spoiler....
Dick assumes that psychic powers are not perfectly precise and as 
a result three psychics are used and what at least two see is 
assumed to be true.  By saying that there is a lead psychic and by 
assuming she is right even when the other two disagree Spielberg 
is saying it is really unimportant to have the other two.  It is a 
betrayal of the original concept.

Another problem, with all the effort put into detail in this film, 
one very simple check was not done.  There is a reference to a 
poll on Tuesday, April 22, 2054.  That will be a Wednesday.

                                        Mark R. Leeper
                                        [email-masked]
                                        Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper

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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 734227
X-RT-TitleID: 1113879
X-RT-AuthorID: 1309
X-RT-RatingText: 9/10