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Minority Report (Widescreen Edition) Customer Reviews (79 - 81 of 102 Reviews)

An Intelligent Thriller With Big Budget Fun!
It seems contradictory to use the words "blockbuster movie" and "intelligent story" in the same sentence, mostly because the big budget movies that fill the summer season's screens lack any kind of real depth and instead feature dazzling special effects and characters that are dazzling, but completely unbelievable. So it is interesting to note that, while "Minority Report" dazzles the audience with a future that is slick, cold and high-tech, it also delivers a story that is engaging, challenging and even thought-provoking.

Set in the year 2054, "Minority Report" is the story of a new form of law enforcement, an agency called "Pre-Crime" that uses pre-cognative telepaths to hone in on murder victims and murderers before the actual crime takes place. By forseeing the future, these officers can prevent murders from occurring. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) heads up this department until the pre-cognatives have a vision that depicts Anderton committing the act of murder.

Anderton, confused by the vision, and desperate to clear his name, runs and goes into hiding until he can figure out the meaning of a vision that one of the precognatives shares with him that somehow has to do with his own future actions.

Confused?

I was too, initially. The movie, which is far more intricate than my synopsis above suggests, is not a film to be viewed casually. If you are looking for mindless entertainment, this is not the film for you. Instead, this film builds layer upon layer, with complex and interesting dialogue between completely developed and believable characters.

Anderton, who became an officer of "Pre-Crime" did so because his son was abducted from him, and much of the story surrounds not only the physical events that are occuring to him, but also the emotional impact and ramifications that one, single event had, and how it changed him forever. Mixed up in a conspiracy that reaches to the very heart of "Pre-Crime", Anderton must deal with his own guilt, anguish and fear, while trying to determine the cause of the actions that are playing out, leading up to the murder he will ultimately commit.

The movie has a very cold look to it. Spielberg, whose films are known globally, took a very definite approach to this film. The colors are drab, done largely in blues and greys, and the film itself has a very grainy feel. The camera work too is shaky, consistent with the type of footage seen in documentaries and shows like "COPS", giving the film a gritty and dismal look that is far from the glossy images so commonly seen in Spielberg's works.

The soundtrack, by John Williams, whose music is heard in most of Spielberg's films, provides a soundtrack that is erie, haunting, beautiful and dark, again, adding a dimension to the stories abysmal feeling.

The action sequences are elaborate, and the effects first rate. So many films today, especially those that rely heavily on CG animation, tend to look animated, artificial. The world created here by Industrial Light and Magic is completely convincing, and the effects blend beautifully into the film, even with the grainy look that was achieved by Spielberg while shooting.

As a whole, this is a complex, intelligent thriller, with a storyline that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat to the very end. I think that the primary reason this film didn't achieve larger success in the theaters was its marketability compared to many of the other films that were being released at the same time. Because of the darker tones, this film is not for everyone, but it is definitely a worthwhile experience, and a film that should be viewed multiple times to attain the full experience of the story Spielberg has created.

Scott Kolecki

An Eye For An Eye...
4.5 stars

On paper the teaming of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise for Minority Report, a movie based upon a Philip K Dick short story, looks a sure-fire winner but then so did Vanilla Sky. The problem is movies aren't made on paper but whereas Vanilla Sky was a great disappointment, thankfully, this is not the case with the excellent (but very cold) futuristic noir thriller Minority Report.

As previously mentioned, Minority Report is based on a Phillip K Dick short story and is similar in tone to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was subsequently made into the rather excellent cult classic, and benchmark for all subsequent sci-fi movies, BladeRunner. Set only 52 years in the future, Tom Cruise plays Detective John Anderton, a driven cop with a self-medicating drug habit, still haunted by the abduction and disappearance of his son, whilst in his care, at a public swimming pool five years previously. Anderton is chief of the Washington DC Pre-Crime police unit, whose SWAT teams stop murders before they can be committed by swooping down from the heavens and arresting the future perpetrators before they can carry out their intended crimes.

Pre-crime is reliant upon the visionary powers of three "pre-cogs"; apparent mutated shadows of human beings, interconnected by computer whilst floating in a tank of water, in a semi-comatose state, at police headquarters. Their dream-like premonitions are displayed on a giant screen, the images conducted and deciphered by a cyber-gloved Cruise, as coloured wooden balls bearing the name of both the prospective victim and perpetrator, roll down plastic tubes like this weeks 'winning' lottery numbers. There is no apparent debate about civil liberties because the pre-cogs are never wrong, nobody gets hurt and the capital's murder rate is down to zero, making it a very desirable system for federal law enforcers. The pre-crime system is almost ready to go national. However, just when everything seems to be going swimmingly Detective Anderton's balls drop (down the plastic tube that is), as the pre-cognitives identify him as a future murderer in a vision on the big screen. As he's in charge and convinced the premonition is fake, he has the opportunity to go on the run in order to prove his innocence, an opportunity denied to every person he's arrested for the past six years.

Minority Report is an excellent and exhilarating ride into the future, full of action, suspense, FX and more twists and turns than a country road. Spielberg's collaboration with the late great Stanley Kubrick (on A.I.) has obviously left an impression in that Minority Report has a distinctly Kubrickian cold alienation about it. In many ways it looks and feels very un-like a Spielberg movie except for the Hitchockian (or Spielbergian if you like) type suspense and mass of product placement (from Gap to Bulgari and Guinness). It is also very much unlike any previous Tom Cruise vehicle, which is refreshing, although some parallels in the action sequences could obviously be drawn to the Mission Impossible movies. However both Spielberg and Cruise are on top form here, ably supported by Max Von Sydow and an all too smooth Colin Farrell (Tigerland) and a virtually unrecognisable Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown). Much credit should also go to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and Scott Farrar, visual effects supervisor from Industrial Light and Magic, who helped make Minority Report a work of art.

Intelligent, very entertaining, ingenious and dark. Minority Report is another great success to add to Mr Spielberg's and Mr Cruise's very impressive CV's. 4.5 stars.

Another Spielberg success!
Tom Cruise is John Anderton, a cop in this futuristic thriller. Together with Burgess, they developed PreCrime, a state-run programme which utilises biological and technological advances to predict crimes even before they happen. Three "precogs" (human "mutants" with extraodinarily acute psychic-like abilities) are at the center of this technology. One day at the swimming pool, John's young son is abducted by a mysterious stranger, whom John has never been able to trace. Through a string of premeditated circumstances, John ends up killing a man who was responsible for abducting and (he assumed) killed his son. He gets put away, but that is not it. One of the "precogs" keeps having flashback memories of a woman getting killed, but nobody has been able to trace the killer. Eventually, (I don't want to spoil this for you!) justice is served :)

This movie is about the future, but it does make you think : what if one day we can all predict everything that's going to happen,and change them before they happen? Can that be a good thing? I think not. Life is full of choices and possibilities. Once these choices and possibilities are taken away from us, then really, why should we even bother to live it?

Premeditating the future is an interesting idea but imagine if someone told you you're gonna kill someone tomorrow. Given the right circumstances, you end up at the point where you are going to kill someone but haven't yet. If you recognise the fact that life is about choice, you know you can prove the prediction wrong by not killing. But if you do not recognise the fact that you can choose what you do and change what they predict about you, then you have really lost the plot - i.e. you'd be just a pawn in someone else's game.

Great sci-fi thriller. Very fast paced, very meaningful theme, you never really know what's gonna happen, and great special effects.

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