Minority Report

I find myself coming to the defense of Minority Report frequently. It's one of those movies like Gangs of New York or Mulholland Drive that proved divisive among film fans, despite clearly being brilliant works by master filmmakers. It's particularly odd that, in terms of Minority Report and its success as an action/science-fiction hybrid, I find myself defending director Steven Spielberg.

Now, I like Spielberg movies, don't get me wrong. The Indiana Jones series, Close Encounters, Jaws, these all rank among my favorite films. And he's made many others, like Catch Me If You Can or A.I. or Empire of the Sun or Jurassic Park which I've greatly enjoyed as well. So, yeah, Spielberg's no slouch. But a lot of his more serious work, like Saving Private Ryan, I've found rather lacking. He's a sentimentalist, and a bombastic sentimentalist at that, and this doesn't really play to my tastes at all.

So how strange that the man finally delivers what I feel to be his best modern film, the best film he's made since Schindler's List and the most fun since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and the fanboy nation doesn't appreciate his work! I find myself the lone voice in the wilderness, telling people to let go of their silly qualms and embrace one of the best films from the most popular filmmaker in the world. It's a rough life...



I'll start with the shortcomings, because I'm man enough to admit that Minority Report does have a few. Firstly, the ending...We've probably all heard by now about how the tone of the end was brightened in the editing room. Was started as a harsh and ironic conclusion becomes a glossy, uplifting one. These are Spielberg's worst instincts coming in to play. He can't surpress his overwhelming instinct to entertain and please his audience. You're talking about a guy who, in strictly financial terms, may be the Biggest Director of all Time. He helped introduce American audiences to the idea that a director could be the "star" of a movie. So this is a guy who has honed his ability to "deliver" for his fans. And I feel that this instinct, while it has made him a very rich and powerful man, doesn't always serve his films.

So, okay, it kind of cops out in the end. Another problem that seems to really affect some filmgoers enjoyment of Minority Report - the straight-forward genre narrative. Spielberg and screenwriter Scott Frank have deliberately set out to make a future noir, and that's exactly what they come up with. This is just a pulp story set in a recognizably close future world. Sure, the story itself is based on Philip K. Dick, but it feels more like James M. Cain that Dick, really.

So, just like an old film noir, the movie isn't about the story. Anyone watching Minority Report wanting a surprise twist or an intriguing puzzle to solve won't find it. This isn't a movie about an innocent man on the run, or the details behind a bizarre crime. It's about future technology, how it shapes and influences our lives. In particular, I see it as a film about how gradual changes go unnoticed over time, changes such as infringements on the right to privacy, until they have eventually become large changes while no one was looking.

Okay, real quick plot synopsis to bring you up to speed. Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, a cop working out of a bureau known as the Pre-Crime Division. Through the use of three unconscious pre-cognitive psychic detectives, Anderton and his team can predict when someone will commit a crime and stop them before they get a chance to carry out their nefarious intentions.

Obviously, this sets up a paradox. Can someone be held responsible for an act they have not yet committed? If you believe in free will, surely there's a chance that a person will not commit a crime even if the detectives (known as pre-cogs) predict they will.

The action of the story kicks in when Anderton himself is accused by the pre-cogs of a crime. In a few hours, he will murder a man he has never met before named Leo Crow. So now it's a race against time to discover the circumstances surrounding Crow's death and either clear his name or prevent his crime from ever taking place.

I'm not sure Spielberg really has any interest in exploring the metaphysical ramifications of Dick's story. A filmmaker could make a great deal of challenging material out of this premise, and Spielberg does have some fun playing around with the logic of the situation. The opening sequence in particular, in which Cruise's team locates a potential murderer and prevents a homicide, builds tension on two levels simultaneously: we wonder if (1) the crime actually will be committed and (2) if Cruise and his team will be able to stop it.

But he also passes up many opportunities to explore the philosophical themes at play. Really, Minority Report isn't a thoughtful, realistic piece of sci-fi, but an intense full-throttle action-adventure-mystery set in the future. Spielberg's interest in the material seems two-fold: he gets to create whiz-bang action set pieces on a massive scale, and he explores how cultures shift and move around scientific and technological breakthroughs.

So, okay, first the action. The movie is filled with some of the best, most exciting, most visually breathtaking action sequences of the decade. This stuff is better than either Matrix sequel, better than any silly disaster movie, and better than anything Lucas has yet come up with for his prequels. And when I say action, I don't only meet visceral chase sequences like the one set on the magnetic highway (where cars linked to tracks whiz by Cruise as he escapes capture) or the one in the futuristic car factory (where Colin Ferrell, as a tenacious Internal Affairs officer, pursues murder suspect Cruise).

I also mean extravagantly well-realized ambitious set pieces. One extended sequence in particular comes to mind. Anderton has gone to an old underworld connection (Peter Stormare) for black-market surgery. See, in the future, everyone's identified at all times by retinal scanners, so the only way Cruise can continue to evade detection is by swapping out his eyeballs with someone else's. (More on this stuff later).

While he's waiting for his eyes to heal, cops arrive at the apartment building in which he's resting and send out little spider-like robot probes to search for him. In one unbroken shot, the camera rockets us around the building, looking in on everyone's rooms, watching the droids inspect their retinas. Cruise's only hope is to pour ice into a bathtub and hide beneath it, hoping the cold will cover up his body heat and the robots won't notice him.

The timing, pace and direction for this sequence are nothing short of astounding. It is carried off brilliantly. Spielberg should do movies like this all the time, because this is where his talent truly lies. One can only hope War of the Worlds this summer includes a few scenes as hair-raising.

Okay, now on to the more thoughtful stuff. I think Spielberg kind of shitcanned most of the science-fiction mumbo-jumbo to focus on more pressing social concerns. The future world of Minority Report is one fueled by the routine invasion of privacy, particularly as concerns advertising and marketing. Its world is one in which cereal boxes talk back to you, in which digital displays at department stores address you by your name when you walk inside. In which everyone knows where everyone else is at all times with no exceptions.

Late one night, Cruise ventures to a bad part of town to score some drugs. (He's a noir hero...of course he's tortued by memories that drive him to drug abuse!) His dealer has removed his own eyeballs to avoid being scanned constantly. He's been forced to blind himself to avoid being seen.

And of course this observation drives much of the action of the film. Cruise must save his old used-up eyeballs to gain admittance to his old office. He can't drive on the freeway because the auto-pilot system will redirect him back to the police station. He's not even in control of his own destiny, because psychics can see his future and determine what he will do before he's done it.

In Spielberg's future, what's most distressing isn't this constant, almost-fascistic invasion of privacy. It's the unconcerned attitude of the future citizenry. People aren't up in arms about the use of pre-cognitive detectives, because statistics show that it works to prevent violent crime. And people continue to shop in the stores where the displays read their eyescans and speak to them personally as if nothing strange had happened at all. In the aforementioned scene, where the robot droids scan the eyeballs of everyone in an apartment building, people don't run from the droids. They relent, relax and let the spiders crawl on to their face. They've been trained to find this ordinary, to not expect the government or corporations to leave them alone even in their own homes.

So, it's kind of a grim and dystopian future, even with the feel-good ending. As I said, by the last five minutes, I had so enjoyed Minority Report, no ending could have spoiled the ride. I repeat, this is one of Spielberg's best-ever films, a nuanced and resonant action film with brilliant special effects, unbelievably gorgeous cinematography by Janusz Kaminski, a terrific lead performance by Tom Cruise and great supporting work from Samantha Morton. A must-see.