Minority Report

Its Washington DC, 2055, Detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the chief of a new form of crime prevention that is being tested in the nation's capital. The program, known as "Pre-Crime", allows the police force to foresee murders. As head officer in charge of the program Anderton is under pressure to see that "Pre-Crime" delivers, as his superiors push for the program to go national. Coupled with that pressure is the grief Anderton is dealing with due to the loss of his son and separation from his wife. The tide turns completely when Anderton apparently commits the "Pre-Crime" murder of a man he doesn't know and is forced to run.

Minority Report is one of the best sci-fi films I've seen in years. Recent highlights of that genre would include Alex Proyas's Dark City (1996), an under-seen gothic think-piece, and Andrew Niccol's Gattaca (1997), a love story and cautionary humanistic tale. I went into this screening with Spielberg's disappointing AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001) in mind. Thankfully, Spielberg keeps the hokey family values to a minimum and delivers a tight, well paced, intelligent sci-fi action/thriller.

The film is a testament to the magnificent imagination of the creators, notably Spielberg, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and production designer Alex McDowell, and the seamless integration of the main concepts in Philip K. Dick's short story on which the film is based. In the film, Washington DC is a highly stylised (though not dystopian as was Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, 1992, which was also based on a Dick short story ) realm of digitalized advertisements, surveillancing eye scanners, robotic "spyders", glider cars, vertical freeways and a pre-emptive police force with prodigious powers of locomotion.

Minority Report also benefits from the strength of one actor who is on screen for close to the entire 147 minutes of the film. Tom Cruise isn't given the room to do his usual "I'm charming whether I'm playing a schmuck or a schiester" shtick, and although their is one protracted and overly CGI'd action man sequence chalking up an impressive performance as the hero/anti-hero haunted by the loss of his young son. Samantha Morton as Agatha, the principal "pre-cog" has a much less showy role but she provides an effective foil to Cruise. Max von Sydow, as Captain Burgess, the head of "Pre-Crime", brings a measure of gravitas to the film (Cruise seems so small next to him), and makes a solid contribution as does Colin Farrell as the Federal investigator unconvinced of the ethical soundness of the program in what are really the only two supporting actor roles.

I won't give more away, suffice to say that this one of the best films I've seen this year and gives a semblance of hope that blockbusters can, on occasion, deliver.

 

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