Subject: Review: Minority Report (2002)

From: Christopher Null <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 19:16:53 -0000

MINORITY REPORT

A film review by Christopher Null

Copyright 2002 filmcritic.com

Per Minority Report, in only 52 years we'll have a new privacy nightmare on our
hands: A police unit in Washington D.C. will genetically engineer three people,
float them in a Jacuzzi, and hook wires up to their heads so the cops can see
murders occurring in the future.  And thus, they can arrest the perpetrators
before they commit the crime.  (I would say this is a nightmare of an idea… but
then again, we are talking about Washington D.C….)

The premise is a mind-bending puzzle on the scale of Memento, courtesy of sci-fi
legend Steven Spielberg and his first collaboration with a stellar Tom Cruise. 
It's also Spielberg's best work since 1993's Schindler's List and flirts with
threatening Blade Runner and A Clockwork Orange as the best paradoxical
utopic/dystopic view of the future.

Minority Report's similarities with its predecessors end pretty quickly; though
all three films follow cops and/or robbers, Cruise's John Anderton gets to play
both, when his "Precrime" department fingers him for an upcoming murder.  In 36
hours, the "pre-cogs" tell him, he'll murder a man he's never even heard of. 
Convinced he's been set up by a nosey Justice Department staffer (Colin
Farrell), Anderton goes on the run through vertical freeways, futuristic auto
plants, and a Blade Runner-ish "sprawl"/ghetto in the hopes of evading his own
crack police department.  But events inexorably lead him closer and closer to
his would-be victim.

At nearly 2 1/2 hours in length, the plot gets considerably more complicated --
including an unexpected final act that takes place after those 36 hours expire. 
All the while though, the film maintains a feverish intensity -- one which I
feared Spielberg had lost altogether with his dippy A.I. -- studded with a great
sense of humor and dazzling special effects.  But it's Minority Report's
almost-too-real version of the future that steals the show.  To get the details
right, Spielberg locked a few dozen futurists in a Santa Monica hotel for three
days and forced them to come up with plausible view of 2054, from the de rigueur
future-cars to The Gap.  The results are hauntingly true to life.

Cruise's dead-on lead performance is also overshadowed by the impressive action
sequences.  When Anderton leaps from one car to another on one of those vertical
freeways, all thoughts of greenscreens and CGI go out the window.  When
advertisements greet him by name, you almost expect to hear the same thing when
you visit the concession stand, the simulacrum of the future is that seamless.

Only a few points detract from an otherwise perfect moviegoing experience. 
Farrell's performance is whiny and ineffective, and Samantha Morton, as one of
the gibbering pre-cogs, borders on annoying.  (And I don't care what changes in
the next 50 years: There will never be a Lexus factory in Washington D.C.)

Mr. Spielberg, you have restored my faith in sci-fi -- and more importantly, you
have restored my faith in you.

RATING:  ****1/2

[* = lowest rating / ***** = highest rating]

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Director: Steven Spielberg

Producer: Jan de Bont, Bonnie Curtis, Gerald R. Molen, Walter F. Parkes

Writer: Scott Frank, Jon Cohen

Starring: Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Colin Farrell, Lois Smith, Peter Stormare,
Tim Blake Nelson, Steve Harris, Samantha Morton

http://www.minorityreport.com/

---
filmcritic.com / http://filmcritic.com/

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X-RT-RatingText: 4.5/5