Yar, you be here: Minority Report (Widescreen Edition) > Customer Reviews

Minority Report (Widescreen Edition) Customer Reviews (13 - 15 of 102 Reviews)

Free Will and Determinism; the debate in the future.
Minority Report is my second favorite Science Fiction film, after Blade Runner. This is a great film with a complicated plot that twists and turns for 2.5 hours.

The acting is superb. Tom Cruise and Max Von Sydow deliver the expected high level professional preformance. If you doubt Cruise's acting ability, look at the scene in which he searchers a crowded public pool for his missing son, frantically calling his son's name. Or watch the scene where the precog, Agatha, reveals the story of the life his missing son could have lived (and then in a great plot twist - we find out she is seeing not the life of the missing son but the life of the yet to be born son). Watch Cruise hang on her every word despite the pain he feels. Colin Farrel does a really good job of showing us a multi-layered personality. He first comes off as a smart-aleck Justice Department attorney conducting an investigation on a pilot program nearing completion. Then he reveals he is a former cop and we see him become more brawny as he fights Cruise in an automobile factory. The viewer is pulled for loyalty between the fugitive Cruise, whom we think is innocent, and the ambitious newcomer Agent Witwer who reveals to us scene by scene a man of competence and justice seeking truth. It is when the viewer fully realizes that Agent Witwer is actually an upright guy, that he is most in danger of falling victim to the dark forces of Washington policy masters.Samatha Morton does a great job of playing Agatha, gradually coming out of her coma and revealing past, present, future to an endangered man who may help reveal the crime and criminal behind her mother's death.

Never underestimate Phillip K. Dick. In "Bladerunner" he was able to construct a great science fiction story around existentialism. In "Minority Report" he resurrects the ancient Oracles of Delphi and builds an action packed story around Free Will and Determinism. It is a strength of this film that at multiple points, the characters are faced with a decision that appears to be foretold but which is still in play. Agatha, the precog, whispers "you can choose" at the most critical of these points and the film firmly supports that we as humans can exert our free will but within a deterministic context. Cruise selects not to kill Leo Crow, the criminal who supposedly kidnapped and killed his son, even though all the precognitions reveal an image in which it appears that he does kill Leo. This is the point in which he exerts his free will, his freedom to chose his course of action, and yet we also see how a structured deterministic world still confines that choice. However once the choice is made, a new future of causative links unfolds and the consequences for freedom take their path. Phillip K. Dick creates a world for us here in which we see that freedom of choice and pre-ordained determinism co-exist and that the consciousness of a good man makes all the difference.

Two final comments on the technology of the future: first, the film rightly shows that customer consumer patterns will become so tailored that marketers will be able to show you exactly what you are looking for before you aware you are looking. Also, the criminal files contained in the precognitive visions were fascinating as both Cruise and Farrell pulled them across the screen for analysis. But, they were essentially images pulled across the desktop of the future, much like we pull documents from a file as we sit at our desks today.

Good acting, witty and suspenseful, intelligent and complicated plot, philosophical underpinning, and fantastic art direction and special effects all come together to make Minority Report an excellent film.

Plot Holes of the FUTURE
After the first viewing of Minority Report I loved it. After a second viewing I liked it. The problem is the plot holes become increasingly distracting the more times the movie is watched. One of the fundamental rules of fantasy and science fiction is when you establish the rules of the world you're creating you owe it to your audience to stick to those rules.

In the case of `Minority Report' the established rules are as follows. The police of the future, through a series of circumstances, find themselves the possessors of three `precogs' (psychics with precognition). However, the movie is very explicit that the only future events they can see are murders (because murders are the most emotional of crimes). The three psychics are able to transmit hazy images of the future crime and it's up to John Anderton (Tom Cruise) to decipher the psychic messages. All three psychics are required and although the three psychics are always correct they don't always agree. If two out of three agree the majority wins and the minority opinion is stored away in a classified `minority report'. If the public were made aware that the precogs occasionally disagreed bye bye pre-crime division. Everything is running along smoothly until Cruise finds himself observing a future murder where he is the killer of a man he's never even met.

SPOILER:
The main problem with the movie is that the conspiracy against Cruise could never possibly work. Cruise uses the precognicient vision in order to track down the man he was supposedly going to kill. How could the precogs have possibly fortold a future that couldn't possibly occur without the existence of the precognition? It sets up an impossible loop. The second big problem occurs after Cruise kidnaps the most talented of the three precogs in order to extract the Minority Report from her brain. The movie was very explicit that the precogs only predicted murders AND require all three yet suddenly she's not only able to predict non murder futures she seems to be able to predict all possible futures. And why would the plot suddenly give her a power that seems to dwarf the ability to see future murders? The answer is plot convenience. In one part she even is given the ability to see visions of futures that couldn't possible occur and just as suddenly as her omniscience arrives it vanishes as needed to push forward the plot. The third problem is that the final precognition is clearly wrong despite the movies insistence that the precogs are never wrong. A `murder' did NOT occur unless suicide is considered murder and the precogs vision was completely different from the events shown. It's a bewildering finale to a movie filled with plot holes.

The lazy scripting takes away a lot but with Steven Spielberg directing the pacing and presentation is top notch. Mr. Spielberg uses an interesting visual style that gives the entire movie a dreamlike quality and the money spent is pretty apparent on the screen. If you are the type of viewer who can shut his/her brain off it's a five star film but if you spend a lot of time contemplating the nuances of a film it's a three star affair. I'll compromise and give it four.


an amazing/dark sci fi movie.
i thought this movie was going to be a little darker than usual for spielberg,and it was.the mood of the film really helps it in the end,though.tom cruise gives another underrated performance and spielberg shows off his expensive special effects (with good reason).the entire movie is very trippy.add another good phillip k. dick adaptation to the list!

Previous Page

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Next Page