by Steven Spielberg, 2002.
Starring Tom Cruise, Colin Farrel, Kathryn Morris, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow.
Rating: 8.5/10, 7/10.
Minority Report marks the first time in eight months I’ve seen a movie in a big multiplex-type theatre (the last time being Mulholland Drive). I’d forgotten how horrible the experience is. The theatre is full of people who won’t stop talking. The theatre is much, much too big, and though the screen is a wonderful size the image is vastly inferior to what it should be. You have to sit through piped-in Backstreet Boys and come to the horrifying realization that yes, you know all the words to "I Want It That Way," while on the screen they ask you to unscramble AARBBR YCKWANTS, and while you’re glad whoever made the scrambled stars thing remembers Barbara Stanwyck, you have to wonder who else does. Then those things go away and music Madonna really should have sued over because it sounds just like Ray of Light starts up while they remind you to throw away your trash and not smoke, except they have to do it with crazy dizzying animation instead of words because their target audience is nearly illiterate. Then the commercials start, and you get a montage of recent overly dramatic Oscar winners that at first just seems like a preview for a new overly dramatic Oscar movie because they’re all the same, but then turns out to be a commercial for, like, insurance. Then the commercial for the buying movie tickets online service, where the ridiculously dramatic commercial is designed to distract you from the fact that the service they’re advertising is utterly pointless. Then the same Jimmy Fund public service announcement they’ve been using for years (the one with the construction workers), which was touching the first time you saw it back in 1989, but by now it’s starting to get on your nerves. And then come the previews, for five or six movies you can’t imagine spending money on, all of which feature actors you love but whose names they don’t even mention in the preview, which makes you sad for ever so many reasons. And by the time each preview is over, you know the entire plot of each movie, including the end. And then the movie starts, and since the volume goes up the entire audience starts talking louder. This is when all of their friends decide to call them on their cell phones, which they have neglected to turn off.
But I am not reviewing the experience of watching a movie at a multiplex. I am reviewing Minority Report, which is a good movie. It’s not great, like some people seem to think (though I'd say mostly they think it’s so great just because they’ve been starved for anything even remotely good from the mainstream cinema that they’ll take anything they can get). It was pretty clumsy at times, though there was always something good going on: if the writing was bad for a bit, there would be an utterly amazing camera angle, or if the direction seemed inept for a second, there would be some great dialogue or something else good happening. The music, too, was fairly OK, though considering that it was written by John Williams I guess I should call it a relative masterpiece.
Brief plot, without giving too much away: we’re in Washington D.C., 2054. The police use the aid of three "pre-cogs," people (though they aren’t treated as people) who can see into the future to predict murders. They do it in enough detail that detectives, like Jon Anderton (Cruise) can investigate their visions and prevent the murders, apparently 100% of the time. One day, though, a precognition comes through saying that Anderton himself is due to commit a premeditated murder in four days. He insists that he has been set up, somehow, and has to evade his own police force while trying to prove his going-to-be innocence.
The film plays a lot of the same notes, in terms of social commentary and intellectual stuff like that, as does A Clockwork Orange—there is a similar treatment of the question of free will, etc. And, appropriately, there are several nice references to that work—a major character named Burgess (that would be von Sydow, as Anderton’s boss), for one thing, and there’s a bit where Anderton has little clamps keeping his eyes open that reminded me an awful lot of the ones they used on Alex when forcing him to watch scenes of ultra-violence. There are other ones, too, only I can’t remember them.
Another way the film reminded me of A Clockwork Orange was in its frank, disturbing violence. There was not nearly as much of that here as in Clockwork Orange, but it was there. The brilliant opening sequence, from the point of view of the pre-cogs as they witness what is about to happen, depicts a brutal double murder, with scissors as the murder weapon. We see nothing clearly—confusing camera angles, quick cuts, washed out, unreal colors, and a grainy image prevent us from making out exactly what is happening, but we see a man putting on glasses, saying how blind he is without them; we see the scissors stabbing into a woman; blood. Even more disturbing, somehow, are the images of the scissors stabbing through the eyes of a face on paper (there is a lot of imagery with eyes in this movie). This scene is a masterpiece in every way, but especially in its use of special effects to create an effect of unreality, rather than, as has increasingly become the case, just to create an illusion of reality (thanks, Matthew, for giving me that conversation).
The effects in general are great. I won’t say much about them—Ebert does enough of that, and I’ve linked you to his review at the bottom of the page, as always—but they really are superb. Almost enough to make me reconsider my hatred of CGI. Perhaps what was best about them was that the film was not about the effects, like too many others are. Rather, the film was about its plot and characters, using effects when necessary. In that and other ways, this was one of those movies (like I discussed in my review of Panic Room) that gives me faith in the future of filmmaking, one that sits in stark contrast to the majority of major releases in recent years. For that reason alone, I have to give it high praise.
The performances are solid, too. Tom Cruise proves yet again that he is more than a (debatably) pretty face (and does so in more ways than one). Colin Farrel, though his nastiness is a bit exaggerated and he really, REALLY needs to shave, is also quite good. Max von Sydow, while not as good as in, oh, say, The Seventh Seal, gives a good performance, though in some scenes he seems to forget that he's not Sean Connery. And Samantha Morton, though I don't know exactly how much talent her role required, is unforgettable as the pre-cog Agatha. She gave me the one chill of the night, when she and Anderton are running through the mall and she, having flashes of precognition, says to a woman they pass, "Don't go home tonight, he knows." The way she says it, the fuzzy and somehow disturbing lighting, the way the camera lingers on the woman whose life has most likely changed entirely, everything here is perfect.
In his review of Minority Report in Newsday, John Anderson (who, I’m sure, was excited about how close he got to having his name in the movies) said that the film was "a fast-moving, entertaining, thought-provoking film that leaves you feeling vaguely empty because it might have been a classic." That sounds about right, though I’d like to put some more emphasis on the word "vaguely."
ps. Notably, one of the best and most memorable small performances in the film—that of the man Anderton is meant to murder—comes from Mike Binder, who wrote, directed, and starred in what is by far the worst movie I have ever had the misfortune of seeing. Who knew?