Minority Report, based on another high-concept, mind-bending story from Philip K. Dick (whose work inspired Blade Runner and Total Recall) is a lot better than I was expecting (again, modulating my level of expectation seems key). It shares with A.I. the flaws of an overly sentimental coda (which at this point goes without saying in a Spielberg film), sloppy lapses of internal logic, and a paradoxically drawn-out yet perfunctory wrap-up that undercuts the true climax of the film. At issue is whether or not one controls one's fate: if you can see the future, can you change it? When the movie answers that question, it feels like the organic climax of the film -- but then, for (what feels like but might not actually be) a half hour, it too patly resolves the whodunnit angle of the plot -- by which point I had not only figured it out but didn't particularly care anymore, since to my mind the most interesting question had already been answered.
But up until then, it's a gripping, entertaining thriller, and Tom Cruise is surprisingly good.
Advertising is an omnipresent backdrop in the world of Minority Report. The saturation of interactive ads in every conceivable venue would seem clever and prescient if it wasn't so repulsively cynical -- and I mean that in the sense that Spielberg wants to have it both ways: He wants to make a trenchant comment about the intrusion of advertising in our lives, and he wants product placement. He actually hired a real ad agency to create the commercials in the movie (something no one besides Slate's financial columnist seems to have deemed noteworthy), and he uses real companies. Why does this bother me? It's the hypocrisy of his mocking the ad culture while heartily advancing and endorsing it.
In the interest of balance, I'm pleased to note that no SUVs appear on the streets of DC in 2054 (which must mean President Kerry outlawed them), and the worst part of town is referred to as "the Sprawl." Journalist, urbanist, and all-around smart guy Joel Garreau wrote an interesting article on his participation in a think tank Spielberg convened to discuss what life would be like in DC in 50 years (talk about my dream job! Hanging out with a bunch of brilliant people batting around ideas about the intersection of movies and reality). Personally, I would have thought every damn building in town would be named after Ronald Reagan, with his bust carved into the Washington Monument.
Cruise is quite effective as John Anderton, the cop in charge of Pre-Crime (which appears to be housed in the Ronald Reagan building, which is sort of fitting considering his legacy has given rise to pre-Pre-Crime enemies of civil liberties like John Ashcroft and most of the current Administration, and no, I'm not going to go into the parallels between the Pre-Crime stuff and the current atmosphere, because many smarter and more articulate people than I have already done it, but as long as we're on the subject of our scary new world, how much do I love James Hoffa's volunteering truckers as "the eyes and ears of the homeland security office" courtesy of their trusty citizens' band radios. CB radio -- it's not just for scofflaws and psychos anymore!), where three drugged-up Pre-Cogs (named Agatha, Arthur, and Dashiell, presumably for the creators of famous detectives) foresee murders -- rather, snippets of murders that must be interpreted and explicated -- allowing the officers to stop them before they happen. Pre-Crime is coming up for a vote to make it a national program -- though this allows for plot machinations as well as frighteningly effective commercials featuring would-have-been victims, it's a ridiculous premise, like having a plebiscite on whether or not the FBI should use wiretaps -- and an ambitious representative of the Department of Justice, Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), has come to sniff out any flaws in the system.
Farrell is excellent and makes a terrific foil for Cruise. Both have a casual charm underlain by a steely determination, and when they go head to head, their pleasant demeanors and light tones are the sheerest veils over their fierce clash. I think I liked Cruise better here because he's quieter -- he's still self-assured, but not cocky or brash.
As with A.I., there are some irritating lapses of logic and continuity. When Anderton gets his eyeballs switched out to foil the retina readers that permeate the city, the doctor (over-the-top Peter Stormare) warns him that if he takes the bandages off before 12 hours have passed, he'll go blind. But Anderton removes the bandages after just six hours, and no blindness. The eyes prove to be a problem again when he uses his old eyeballs to gain access to the Pre-Crime building via the retinal reader -- wouldn't you think that they'd have some kind of alert system in place when a reader identifies a fugitive, and wouldn't you think a law enforcement facility would be the first place that kind of system would be installed, and that even if it didn't actually alert anyone, it would at least deny the fugitive entrance? Yet the eyes of a hunted murderer (well, pre-murderer) keep opening doors with nary a hitch.
Visually the movie is engaging, if not very original. The blue-gray palette casts a nicely grim atmosphere (so much so that the few labored gags seem jarringly out of place -- the sequence where Anderton and another cop fight their way through an apartment building, disrupting the residents, is just plain stupid and should have been cut). The niftiest gadgets are the robotic spiders that skitter through buildings scanning retinas. Though the cars look futuristically sleek, it's unlikely that our culture would wind up with nothing but tiny two-seaters that all look exactly the same.
Minority Report is a nice alternative to the flotsam of
loud, useless summer movies, and if it has its flaws, it's nevertheless
entertaining, sort of a blockbuster for people who don't want to turn
off
their brains when they go into a movie theater.
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