Imagine a world, where cops always knew when a murder that would take place, and could always stop it. Now that would be pretty cool. Even cooler, it’s better as big-screen movie entertainment, loaded with state-of-the-art special effects and action-hero Tom Cruise to lead the way, directed by Steven Spielberg.
The movie follows John Anderton (Cruise), a Precrime cop, who lost his son, Sean, and is divorced from his wife. Since then, he’s joined Precrime, who can detect murders thanks to the help of future-seeing Precogs, and can stop them call. But one morning, a Precog has a vision of Anderton committing a murder, and from then on it’s one big chase, with Anderton outrunning the cops he worked with wile trying to figure out what’s really on, all while in a futuristic world thanks to the help of special effects and CGI.
Minority Report is essentially a neo-noir film, giving it a unique visual style, the colors being dysaturated. It’s set in the future, with a few elements of a utopia system. It’s also made in the tradition of Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi film, Blade Runner.
I might as well state in my review that I was a bit disappointed by Minority Report in my first viewing of it. However, I came to respect it a bit more in a second viewing, and it was there that I realized Minority Report is actually a pretty darn good, though not classic, science fiction film.
Rounding out the cast are Cruise as Anderton, Max von Sydow as Anderton’s superior, Lamar Burgess, Colin Farrell as the Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, and Kathryn Morris as Lara, Anderton’s ex-wife. This is actually one of Cruise’s best, or better, roles of his career.
Minority Report makes for a mostly fine, albeit lengthy, film. It generally works fine as a detective story set in a futuristic world, except for the fact that it’s nevertheless hampered a bit by a father-son relationship story, as that aspect of the film never dig deep enough from where it began, and therefore also never gets anywhere that far in the plot. Fortunately, we are given plenty of scenes showing Anderton escaping the cops, and the results are thrilling and nearly exhilarating.
Spielberg and Cruise have proven to be an effective team up. They teamed up again for the disappointing 2005 movie War of the Worlds, which quite frankly wasn’t as good as this.
Critically acclaimed as one of the best films of 2002, I do admit that Minority Report delivers some nice cinema. It does raise a couple of questions for us, and the graphics and special effects are very well done, and real looking.
All in all, Spielberg has crafted a worthwhile film. Minority Report contains some thrilling sequences, state-of-the-art special effects, a good enough plot, and it’s fortunately not used as an all-out star vehicle for Cruise.
****/5
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