Tom Cruise finds a way to beat rush hour traffic in Minority Report.

Minority Report
20th Century Fox/DreamWorks, 2002
Directed by Steven Spielberg

$$$3/4

In the future, you won't drive your car, your car will drive you. No more traffic jams. A computerized system will weave your car up and down highways that go both horizontally -- and vertically. All while you sit back in your seat and relax with a newspaper that changes while you read it, updating itself with breaking news.

When you enter any public space, computers will instantly scan your face and recognize your identity, not just for security reasons -- but also so every billboard you pass can be personalized just for you. And you thought telemarketers were bad.

Oh yeah, and there's no murder because the police can predict crime.

Director Steven Spielberg has shown us many versions of the past -- from Indiana Jones to Schindler's List. But now, with Minority Report, at last we get to see his version of the future (his last film, A.I. doesn't count -- that was Stanley Kubrick's vision.)

Working from a short-story by Philip K. Dick (whose Sci-Fi tales have also inspired Blade Runner and Total Recall) Spielberg has fashioned a clever, ironic, suspenseful thriller that exemplifies the best qualities of good science fiction. It's imaginative and has foresight. It shows us where we're going as a society -- and why we shouldn't go there.

Tom Cruise, teaming with Spielberg for the first time, plays John Anderton, Chief of the Washington, D.C. Pre Crime Division. In the year 2054, he and his team prevent crimes before they happen, by using visions recorded from the brains of three youngsters with psychic abilities. The three pre-cogs as they're called, are kept sedated in a pool, their brains -- hardwired to police computers, providing visions of future crimes, 24-7. Anderton's team uses the visions to determine the time and place of the murder -- then swoop down in jet packs, at just the right moment to stop it.

The idea of arresting, charging and convicting people for crimes they haven't actually committed yet, has a timely, Ashcroftian ring. The system, though, may be justifiable, as long as it's perfect... as long as there's no abuse -- and as long as the visions aren't manipulated to implicate the wrong people. But after the discovery of some mysteriously missing files, Chief Anderton begins to suspect all is not perfect. And when a vision from the pre-cogs accuses him of a future murder, he really knows something's up. Anderton is forced to go on the run, dodging his own police force as he tries to solve a murder that hasn't happened yet.

You don't have to be a pre-cog to see some of the plot developments coming way down the road. But once they arrive, the screenwriters still manage to throw you some nice Hitchcockian curves. Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski also provide a dark, noirish look to match the mystery and intrigue.

In addition, Anderton's escape allows Spielberg to again display his talent with action. With apologies to John Woo, no one directs an action scene better, with more perfect pacing, than Spielberg. (Just go back and look at the action scenes in the Indiana Jones trilogy -- they are still flat-out the most exciting ever.)

The look of the movie is amazing and distinct. But this future world also allows for some dark, ironic laughs. The satirical depiction of future society rings true, because the technological evolutions -- such as teensy-weensy cellphones so small you just clip them on your ear -- don't seem far-fetched.

But this does serve to highlight the movie's one flaw: the odd juxtaposition of a highly plausible depiction of technological evolution -- with a premise that relies so heavily on the seemingly implausible concept of naturally existing psychic abilities.

But, The Psychic Friends Network aside, it's not hard to see much of the world of Minority Report coming true. Maybe that's because good Sci-Fi is often really more about the present than the future. And this -- is good Sci-Fi.
(c) Copyright 2002