Review of Minority Report (2002) by Erik Z — 06 Apr 2013

Going into this movie, I had no idea what it was about and who was in it, but somebody recommended it to me and hey! I was pleasantly surprised.

Tom Cruise is back in another action flick -- except it's a lot more than that, as Minority Report is set in 2054. John Anderton (Cruise) is the head of a special police force called Precrime, in which psychics called precogs foresee a murder happening in the future and the police arrest the perpetrator before it happens. This program, of which Lamar Burgess (Von Sydow) is the head, has been widely successful in Washington DC and Virginia, and Burgess is looking to expand the program across the United States. The only glitch? Anderton finds an inconsistency in one of the murder files, unlocking secrets that are meant to be kept from the world. This leads to him being framed, and the plot then thickens.

I loved Tom Cruise in this film. His character is seen to be very unstable since his child was kidnapped a few years earlier, and Tom Cruise does an amazing job portraying such a broken character. Colin Farrell plays Danny Witwer, a Department of Justice agent, who is looking to take Anderton down, and he does a great job of this as well. I want to talk more about his character but I don't want to give any spoilers!

Now on to the concept. I loved the idea of the future. The effects were pretty good for 2002, and the ideas were what made me so interested. First was the whole precrime idea in itself, the first scene is of them preventing a murder, and it was probably the best part in the whole movie. Tom Cruise looks through the images the precogs see on a floating computer hologram thing, and directs it with his lit up gloves, and it's just amazing to watch. The next thing was the cars and the roads, which moved left, right, up and down. Spielberg does a great job of making all the new technology seem practical for the future, and explains it to the audience through a policeman explaining it to Farrell's character.

There were also some things that didn't work for me in the film. The first thing would be some of the dialogue. There were some cheesy one-liners that could have been totally omitted, and which brought the film down a notch. The second thing would be Agatha, played by Samantha Morton. I liked the character and the idea, but there are scenes where she foresees that something bad will happen and screams. It wasn't even a womanly scream it was a deep weird scream that I also thought was a little unnecessary.

For ratings, I would like to give this film 4 stars. I loved the themes and ideas it brought forth, and the way it was shot was also amazing, but there were little aspects that didn't appeal to me.