MINORITY REPORT (2002)  ***

Reviewed 6/14/02

Steven Spielberg’s best films are his early ones, genre pieces that arrived seemingly without effort.  Then the importance bug bit him, and he tried to make “good for you” films like A COLOR PURPLE, SCHINDLER’S LIST, AMISTAD, and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN with varying degrees of success.  After this bug, he couldn’t quite get “mere” entertainment right anymore as the first two JURASSIC PARK films demonstrated.  MINORITY REPORT is a step in the right direction even if it succumbs to familiar Spielberg flaws.

Set in 2054, Washington D.C. has eliminated homicide since creating its Pre-Crime Division, based on the prognostications of three precogs.  The precogs were children of drug addicts who survived a controversial experimental procedure and subsequently developed the ability to see the future.  Now the police can stop murders even before they happen.  Everything is apparently running smoothly until Pre-Crime Director Lamar Burgess (Max Von Sydow), and his one-time apprentice, Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise), get a visit from Federal Agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) who seemingly has plans to usurp the agency’s power.  Anderton, a man truly devoted to the system, suddenly finds the precogs have branded him the future murderer of a man he has never even met.  Trying to clear himself of a crime he has yet to commit, he goes on the run while pursued by his own men.

As a feature film, MINORITY REPORT necessarily deviates from its short story source by Philip K. Dick.  The major change, and it is a disappointing one, is to alter the main focus of the original story, which asked the science fiction question, “Can one change one’s own predestined future, and if so, how valid is the Pre-Crime system?”  The movie turns the plot into a more conventional thriller with a science fiction setting.  As Anderton hurtles toward his meeting with destiny, a conspiratorial scheme overtakes the movie’s original setup.  Writers Scott Frank and Jon Cohen do a terrific job of crafting an intelligent story, but the ending nevertheless feels overly familiar.

Most of the action scenes are ho-hum.   Cruise leaping between CGI vehicles swarming down the side of a building looks uncannily like the 1981 video game Frogger.  Fisticuffs on an automobile assembly line is old hat – action so common, it was just seen in Attack of the Clones.  But Spielberg does fashion two of the best set pieces of the year, and they are the film’s high points.  The first involves Anderton being tracked down in a dilapidated apartment complex by little robot spiders.   The second and even better one has Anderton escaping a mall with precog Agatha (an underused Samantha Morton).

MINORITY REPORT’s strongest aspect is the fully realized world Spielberg creates where the citizenry accept a total lack of privacy.  They are monitored everywhere they go with retinal scans, mostly so advertisements can cater to them personally.  Cruise is the black hole in the movie.  His Anderton fails to deviate from the usual Cruise action persona in the slightest, which basically means he is a combination of stoic righteousness and not-quite sublimated cockiness.  His character is plagued by the death of his young son from six years ago, but this just gives Spielberg the opportunity to cash in on his cherished and unearned sentimentality.

Carrying the Kubrick influence over from his last film, A.I., Spielberg includes Kubrick-style absurdist humor and also pays explicit homage to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.  Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski supplies MINORITY REPORT with a chrome sheen and a grainy noir look.  John Williams’ music, which has lately been overbearing, is thankfully minimized in the background.   Instead Spielberg utilizes several classical pieces.  The nicest touch is Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony while Anderton literally conducts a search for suspects by waving his arms before a computer screen; he is, after all, trying to keep the crime unfinished.