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"Minority Report"
(Reviewed June 3, 2002)
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Up until its last 15 minutes or so, "Minority Report" is a slightly disjointed but almost always fascinating chase thriller full of bizarre science, incredible visuals and pervasive dream-reality weirdness. Then it all collapses into a painfully prolonged ending that is so cliche and pedestrian you will think the movie got hijacked by the purveyors of some hack TV cop show.
Tom Cruise assays the role of hyper-intense, laser-focused cop John Anderton with robotic efficiency in a future society where precognizants can find murderers before they commit their crimes. He is an intensely loyal true believer in the "Precrime" organization...until he finds himself targeted by the technology and goes on the lam himself.
The ensuing hot-pursuit scenes are the best part of the movie, and include an up-down-and-sideways futuristic car chase that puts to shame a nearly identical scene in "Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones." In fact, another scene the two movies have in common is a "factory menace," assembly-line-peril nailbiter. (Industrial paranoia seems to be all the rage this summer; even "Scooby-Doo" includes a similar scene. Ye Gods!)
What's odd about "Minority Report," directed by Steven Spielberg, is how many movies by other directors it evokes instead of resembling a unique vision. For the first three-quarters of the movie, those influences range from Paul Verhoeven (the pervasive tongue-in-cheek media and advertising inserts in "Robocop" and "Starship Troopers") to Terry Gilliam (the dark humor and eccentric characters of "Brazil") to Ridley Scott (the creepy futurism of "Blade Runner," also written by "Minority Report" original writer Philip K. Dick) to Stanley Kubrick (the chilly, mechanical world of "2001"). "Minority Report"'s tone and visuals are more like "A.I." -- that most un-Spielberg of Spielberg movies, a "posthumous collaboration" with Kubrick -- than anything else the director has done.
I'm not sure who influenced the writing and staging of the movie's final 15 minutes. Maybe some third-string burnouts from "Diagnosis: Murder."
The ending is not the only thing that doesn't work. Every scene featuring a character who is supposed to pass for comic relief (the eye doctor, the hologram hustler, the organist-warden) falls shockingly flat, as do other attempts at humor that only undercut the suspense. An essential plot point involving an eye is left dangling. And there is one logic lapse that makes no sense whatsoever, considering the "heightened level of security" one has to assume would be put in place as soon as Cruise hotfoots it out of Precrime. (Maybe the honchos at Precrime never saw the Sylvester Stallone movie "Demolition Man," wherein Wesley Snipes used exactly the same ridiculously preposterous means as Cruise of gaining entry to a restricted location.)
Still, what's good about "Minority Report" is almost good enough to make up for its shortcomings. The movie's thematic riffs on predestination, destiny and existentialism -- not to mention its indictment of the kind of "big brother" police state tactics that America is adopting these days -- will give audiences something to think about on the way to their cars, which is more than can be said about most flicks. The flashy on-the-run and in-the-air thrill-ride scenes are a rush, but so are many of the smaller moments; a crucial scene at a swimming pool is so expertly staged and shot it is like a little gem. And "Minority Report" does look damned good, often shot with an arty blue tint.
Shame about that ending, though. You will know while watching "Minority Report" exactly where it SHOULD have ended. Maybe somebody like the guy who did the unauthorized edit of "The Phantom Menace" will get hold of "Minority Report" somewhere down the line and whip it into shape. Ain't technology wonderful?
Back Row Grade:B-
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