Posted: 06/23/2002

Minority Report

(2002)

by Hank Yuloff

Presenting the minority view on Spielberg’s latest…

What? I’m not gushing over a Spielberg creation? Blasphemy! A certain fellow FM reviewer (who’s editing this very review) will be shocked.

Yeah, well, like Spielberg’s last directorial piece of celluloid, A.I., Minority Report is beautifully and stunningly photographed, has all the cool little details that make it fun to watch and has a plot that is plausible… if you like your science fiction with lots of holes in the story.

From the trailers, here is what you know going in. In the year 2054, we are able to predict murders in Washington DC before they happen. There is a police force in charge of rounding up these potential criminals and locking them away. Tom Cruise plays Detective John Anderton, the lead officer for a group of these police. But there seems to be a problem with the system and he is now on the run for a murder he will commit.

Here is the rest of the story so we can move on. The future crimes are being foretold by a group of three humans called Pre-Cogs. They are the children of drug addicts who were taking a new form of hallucinogen. The drug gave these children the ability to see into the future those crimes that “wrench apart the human fabric of society,” aka murders. Not rapes, or Enron collapses, or political races that eliminate 50,000 voters off the records in a certain Southern state, just murders. The Pre-Cogs are electrically connected, and when one of them gets an image, the other two tie into it. Then it is transmitted to the cops, who turn the images they are sent into hard facts and then race off to catch the killer-to-be.

What the cops don’t know is that these images are really a best two out of three report. Sometimes, one of the Pre-cogs sees a different image, a Minority Report, and it is deleted from what the cops get. No sense spoiling a perfect system with our old favorite: Reasonable Doubt. The Minority Reports are what have made the system fallible and allow for our hero, Cruise, to be framed. He will spend the balance of the movie seeking out The Truth.

The real truth is that there are so many holes in the plot that my wife and I (who don’t always agree on these reviews, by the way), spent a lot of time leaning over the armrest saying, “But what about…?” It’s these holes that make Minority Report a good movie, not a great movie. Let me give you a few examples without ruining the movie for you. 1) Cruise is framed for a murder. Good police work always asks what time did the victim die? In the case of this particular murder, Cruise was nowhere near the crime scene — and a phone call made by his ex-wife (saying he had just arrived at her place) at the time of the murder can prove it. 2) We have all seen movies where the good guy has to sneak back into his work place to get information vital to clearing his name. In MR, they use eye scans instead of card keys to let people into buildings. After Cruise is on the run, don’t you think that his eye scans would be blocked? In other words, he never should have been able to get back into the building to get information which might clear his name. 3) At the time of this movie, the whole pre-recognition preventing crime thing, is about to go nationwide. If this thing goes nationwide, what is going to happen to the three pre-cogs? Talk about system overload. And how will they be able to pick up murders outside the DC area? And while we are at it, why is it that they only pick them up in the DC area now? 4) There is a Lexus factory in downtown DC, but where were all the workers? And why is the car that Cruise is driving the only completed car we see in the factory? And why is there gas in a car that is just coming off an assembly, line enabling him to get away? [Gas in an electric car, Hank? — Ed.]

Fine. I have to just go with it. The story is solid, Spielberg’s a genius. Blah, blah, blah. I have no problem telling you the movie has a great story line. It is a captivating bit of eye candy, the best I have seen since last year’s Moulin Rouge. I spent a good deal of the movie wanting to know more about how it was shot instead of paying attention to the plot. Oops, I did it again.

Hey, you’re going to go see this movie. It is a summer blockbuster that is better than Harry Potter and the acting is a whole lot more real. Colin Farrell (Hart’s War) is excellent as a Justice Department detective looking into how good the Pre-Cog program really is. Samantha Morton (She played the mute Hattie opposite Sean Penn in Sweet and Lowdown) is excellent as one of the future seeing pre-cogs. Max von Sydow (Snow Falling on Cedars), Steve Harris (Eugene from TV’s The Practice), and Neal McDonough (Band of Brothers) are all quite good in supporting roles to Cruise’s wonderful lead. I found depth and reality to the characters and enjoyed taking a trip through the future of law enforcement with them. And there is one particularly excellent and powerful scene in a garden between Cruise and long time character actress Lois Smith, who plays Dr. Iris Hineman, a researcher who made the program possible.

I generally don’t listen to reviews of movies I have to see, but I did happen to listen to Roger Ebert go on and on about how perfect this movie was. Dude, who’s butt are you trying to kiss? Especially when you panned Windtalkers in the same show. So, although I’m probably in the minority of reviewers who tell you there is anything wrong with the plot of Minority Report, I do tell you to go and enjoy. Just turn off the “but what about?” button in your brain.

Hank Yuloff is an advertising guy in Los Angeles who has no butts to kiss in the movie industry, unless, of course Meg Ryan is available. [And yet, he raved about Charlie’s Angels — Ed.]

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