...a stylish, thoughtful, and thought-provoking future-noir thriller.
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"Science fiction frees the imagination to journey anywhere it can imagine itself. It doesn't have boundaries. It doesn't fence you in. It's the most liberating genre."
--Steven Spielberg
People may argue about his place in the pantheon of great film directors, but there can hardly be any doubt that Spielberg is among the world's most consistent directors. His string of megahits speaks for itself and marks a director whose eye has always been equally on the intellect, the heart, and the gut.
"Minority Report" is a case in point. What might have been just another sci-fi flick in some other director's hands becomes under Spielberg a stylish, thoughtful, and thought-provoking future-noir thriller. The film is not without what I see are a few minor annoyances, but it is still one of the best films of 2002.
The movie is based on a story by the late P.K. Dick, from whose prolific writings have come such other sci-fi films as "Blade Runner" (1982), "Total Recall" (1990), "Screamers" (1995), and "Impostor" (2002). Maybe with an author like Dick, a director like Spielberg, and a star like Tom Cruise, the movie couldn't fail.
Dick's stories are never without their gimmicks, and this one's a doozie: The America of the mid twenty-first century (2054) has developed a system for preventing crime before it happens! Cruise plays John Anderton, Chief of the Department of Precrime in Washington, DC, a unit that for the previous half dozen years has kept the city homicide free, courtesy of a technology that utilizes the talents of a small group of people with ESP called precogs, who detect murderers before they commit their crimes. But things go awry for Anderton when the precogs tab him for a future murder himself, and he has only a day and a half to figure out if someone's framed him or if he really will kill somebody.
Most of the plot is, admittedly, a standard variation of the old Hitchcock routine of a supposedly guiltless man trying to prove his innocence while all the world is chasing after him. But Dick adds a few surprising twists to the situation, and Spielberg and his actors embellish it with such visual flair that we hardly notice the tale's timeworn origins. Be especially mindful of Spielberg's serious, philosophical exploration of free will throughout the film; along with his rather less weighty use of black humor, like a grotesque eye operation that may have you smiling and cringing simultaneously; plus his production of a series of cliff-hangers worthy of Indiana Jones.
A major accomplishment of the film is that while it stars one of the biggest box-office attractions in Hollywood, it is not what I would term a "Tom Cruise" movie. That is, under Spielberg's direction the actor so thoroughly submerges himself in the part of Anderton, we don't notice he's a movie star any more; he simply becomes the character. This is, I'm sure, the most convincing mark of a good actor, as opposed to a star--that he can become so chameleonlike he is able to blend into the character he's playing. Beyond maybe the first five minutes of the film, we forget entirely that it is Tom Cruise in the lead role and only concentrate on the role itself. Movies like "Mission Impossible" make us forget that Cruise can act, too, and like "Born on the Fourth of July," it is a "Minority Report" that reminds us just how good he can be at his craft.
Cruise's fellow actors are of commensurate stature in the film. Colin Farrell plays Danny Witwer, an agent of the Justice Department assigned first to observe the Precrime facility and later to track down Anderton. Like Anderton, Witwer is a dedicated policeman, and he is up to the challenge of finding his man. But is he also open-minded enough to understand and possibly sympathize with Anderton's dilemma? The relationship of Tommy Lee Jones and Harrison Ford in "The Fugitive" comes to mind. Samantha Morton has perhaps the most challenging job of all, playing one of the precogs, Agatha, at first a mere automaton, who must later take on a life of her own. The venerable Max Von Sydow plays the Director of Precrime, Lamar Burgess, the man in charge of the city's new technological wonder unit and an implicit father figure to Anderton. He is, as always, authoritative in his role. The final cast member I'll mention is Lois Smith as Dr. Iris Hineman, the scientist responsible for developing the Precog technology, a woman who now wonders if it's all worth what it's cracked up to be. It is she who steers Anderton in the only direction that may save his life, toward a "minority report." Ms. Smith is remarkably skillful in conveying her character's compassion and distraction at the events that transpire, and her one brief scene in a greenhouse is made memorable by her presence.
Then, there are the special effects. They are not of the sort to wow you the way Lucas's special effects do in the latest installments of "Star Wars"; instead, they're more subtle, more integrally woven into the fabric of the story. A chase segment using outdoor elevators and jet packs, for instance, we have seen done before, yet here it's done so well it provides one of the most truly thrilling parts of the movie, one effectively punctuated by a fight scene in a fully automated automobile factory. The future society's use of retina scans to identify anyone within range of a retinal camera is absolutely frightening because advertisers use the device to target customers, putting ordinary people's names on signs and marquees as they walk by them. And mechanical spiders (cleverly called "spyders") are among the creepiest of the police's detection appliances, wriggling their way around and through anyone's home and personal effects in their relentless pursuit of wrongdoers.
Occasionally, movies with significance beyond the casual plot line or characterizations encounter a degree of resistance on the part of viewers, if not downright hostility. But with extraordinary insight Spielberg explores, along with the more esoteric subject of free will, two other, rather sophisticated topics, and they both add to one's enjoyment of the picture. The first is the idea of the mind police. I mean, what if we really could stop crime before it happened by, in essence, reading people's minds? Would a civilized society accept the risks? Would people be willing to shunt aside personal freedom and respect for privacy in their quest for a safer, more ordered, and crime-free community? Do we really want the government reading our innermost thoughts? And speaking of whether the means justify the ends, what about the treatment of the precogs in the movie? They are human beings, after all, but they are reduced to mere vegetables in the story, serving only the good of the State while languishing in a government laboratory. Would people be willing to allow the sacrifice of a few to assist the many? They're hard questions, ones we have to face even today when issues of national identity cards, universal DNA records, street-corner surveillance cameras, and the torturing of war prisoners come up. How far should we, and would we, go to preserve our personal and national safety?
I mentioned earlier that I noticed a few small things that annoyed me. For one, I became tired very quickly of Spielberg's use of largely bleached out, ice-blue or sepia colors. The device of washing out the colors worked perfectly well in "Saving Private Ryan" to convey a sense of documentary reality to the opening moments of the picture, and the device works to an extent here, also, to establish a mood of sterility and deadly sameness in the antiseptic wasteland of the future world. But for two-and-a-half hours, well, enough is enough. It isn't as though the colors reveal the striking contrasts of the best black-and-white cinematography; film noir needn't be dull to convey a dark mood. I mean, even when we do get color, it's mainly low-key pastels as in the scenes of the countryside or inside Dr. Hineman's greenhouse. I thought while watching the movie, Yes, we understand the import of the color scheme early on, Mr. Spielberg; may we move on to more natural shades?
Trivial as it may be, I was also momentarily distracted by the medium and long shots of the future cars and highways Spielberg employs for his coming society. They looked to me for all the world like the little speeders in Disney's old "Tron" movie. I kept thinking they were computer generated instead of being real, and I don't believe that was the concept the director was trying to convey.
Then, too, while I have always enjoyed the use of classical music in movies, Stanley Kubrick's work comes to mind, and while I found Spielberg's use of classical music in "A.I." to be quite effective, I wondered during "Minority Report" if the director wasn't now simply using it as a gimmick, maybe to make points about the enduring quality of the compositions, to be sure, about the timelessness of it and all, but, more important, about the stifled, homogenized tone taken by a future world as conveyed by the balmy, eighteenth and nineteenth-century classical tunes playing like elevator music in most of the homes and offices. I can understand the use of movie music to convey mood, but, like the director's use of color, I question if enough of one thing isn't enough.
Finally, there's the matter of the film's conclusion, which could have wrapped up thirty minutes earlier. Let's just say that despite Spielberg's creation of a hard-edged atmosphere in the film's first two hours, he couldn't resist tagging on a conventional Hollywood ending. Well, maybe this is how Dick's own story ended, and it perfectly fitted the director's needs. I don't know; I haven't read the original story. But the ending exemplifies, after all, why Spielberg is Spielberg and why he's so successful. He knows how to reach and please a maximum audience. I'm just not convinced the ending makes for a better movie.
Video:
As I've said, Spielberg purposely uses toned-down, soft-grained colors, mostly dull, iron-blues, to suit his needs, colors that come across better on the home screen than I remember them from the movie theater, better focused but still bleached out to a sameness of hue and still combined with dark, gritty overtones. Fortunately, the image in this widescreen anamorphic transfer seems to be reproduced beautifully, not only with a clarity of focus but with little or no apparent added grain. Interestingly, not only is the reproduction on the DVD clearer than I recall seeing it in a theater, but the screen ratio, measuring approximately 2.20:1 across my television, appears wider. Still, this may say more about the multiplex movie house where I originally saw the film than anything about the disc transfer; I don't know. There are periodic instances of lightly wavering lines, moiré effects, but they are of little importance and should not distract a viewer from Spielberg's vision.
Audio:
You'd expect a Spielberg production to have good sound, and it does, available in Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS Surround, or Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround. This is not quite blockbuster (or neighbor-buster) sound like "Star Wars II," but it's natural, wide-ranging sound, nevertheless, that always reinforces the action rather than calls any particular attention to itself. Just listen to those creepy little mechanical spyders scuttling around or the dynamic, sometimes gut-thumping bass, and you'll get my point.
My colleague Eddie Feng, whose remarks on the film are appended below, mentioned that he thought the sound on the DVD was not quite as punchy as he remembered it from the theater. This may be true. There are so many variables between movie-house sound and home-theater sound, it's hard to tell. The differences in speaker systems, layout of the speakers, electronics employed from theater to home, as well as changes in the editing and sonic mix from film to DVD (or CD) make any conclusive comparisons moot. Let it suffice to say that the sound, like the picture quality, will not disappoint the home-theater enthusiast.
Extras:
The two-disc set includes every bell and whistle imaginable except one: You won't find any audio commentaries accompanying the film. I assume neither Spielberg nor Cruise had the time. Anyway, what is here is impressive. Disc one contains the widescreen presentation of the film, of course, the various soundtracks, English as the only spoken language option, English and Spanish subtitles, and twenty-four scene selections.
Disc two contains the bonus items, and they are conveniently arranged on the menu, if somewhat of a nuisance to navigate. There are six major headings for the various materials, each one further subdivided into categories. In all, there are over forty separate items a person can click on to view all the stuff available, a small headache after a while. Yes, I would have preferred a nice, long documentary to all this clicking around, but what we get is certainly interactive, as the folks who make these things like to call them. I guess they're supposed to keep viewers awake, allowing them to pick and choose among the things they fancy. Can't argue with that.
So, the main sections are called, first, "From Story to Screen," divided into two nine-minute segments, "The Story: The Debate" and "The Players," both using interviews with the director and star. The second section is called "Deconstructing Minority Report," and it is divided into five sub-categories that take us behind the scenes, each lasting from four to nine minutes. These sub-categories are "The World of Minority Report," "Precrime and Precogs," "Spyders," "Precog Visions," and "Vehicles of the Future." The third section is called "The Stunts of Minority Report," and it includes three visual explanations of about two-and-a-half minutes each on how particular stunts were executed. The fourth section is called "ILM and Minority Report," and it includes six different special effects expositions of about two to three minutes each. The fifth section is called "Final Report: Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise," four minutes of final wrap-up with the gentlemen in question. The sixth and last section is called "The Archives," and it's here you'll find thirteen galleries of production concepts from hovercraft to buildings to architecture. You'll also find three storyboard sequences; three widescreen theatrical trailers and a game trailer; cast and filmmaker information; and extensive production notes. Navigating through all of these details requires quite a few clicks, as I've mentioned, and the beautifully animated menu screens don't make it much easier if you're in a hurry. I recommend hitting the "forward" button if you can't wait for the animations to finish.
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[release]10566[/release]