Being a fan of Philip K. Dick's writing, I am rather pleased in general that most of the adaptions of his work to film have also been very successful in the artistic sense, and so I was quite interested to see how "Minority Report" would measure up to the modern sci-fi classics like "Bladerunner" and "Total Recall." It is with great satisfaction that I can truthfully say this is perhaps the best movie that has ever been derived from any of Dick's literary masterpieces.

Let me get the usual stuff out of the way: Tom Cruise is a fine actor and was a good choice for the lead in this film and Stephen Spielberg can still direct a fine picture. Now that I've said that, I'll stop wasting time and tell you what maybe everyone didn't already know or couldn't read in some other review bent simply on beating the same old horse without saying anything new or useful.

In the acting department, I first have to pay my obligatory tribute to Max von Sydow, who is one of a dying breed of actors who can truely be called artists and this movie makes up but a small fraction of his impressive body of work. I recommend all of his earlier movies made in his native Sweden, most of which are directed by Ingmar Bergmann, and are all classics independant of national boundaries. Also of note is the girl who played the female "precog." I unfortunately don't know her name or what other movies she's acted in, but she does a nice job here.

The special effects are, needless to say of a film of this caliber (and budget), really nice. I really dislike overuse of computer graphics, but I find them perfectly acceptable when they actually have an aesthetic purpose, and in "Minority Report" this is certainly the case. Not only is there unity within the computer graphics of the film, there is also good unity between the graphics and the lighting and other visual aspects of the film. Unlike in movies such as the new "Star Wars: Espisode II" where the contrast between the computer graphics and other visuals is too sharp and far too noticable, the effects used in "Minority Report" blend in quite nicely, lending a nicely homogenous futuristic shimmer to the whole movie.

Perhaps the best part about minority report is simply the content and execution. Aided by the other afforementioned elements - the acting and the visual aesthetic and atmosphere - the writing is what really ties this movie together into a really solid end product which evolves and interacts with the viewer. Films of this kind are still small in number but are becoming quite popular, as is evident in the success of recent movies like Christopher Nolan's "Memento." Writers have long known that displacing various parts of a story chronologically makes for interesting results, but it is nice to see it brought to the next level in film, where these tactics, when skillfully manipulated, can use the mind and memory of the viewer as an instrument in itself which aids in the unfolding of the story. In other words, even though the movie is playing from finite beginning to finite end without changing speed or direction, the deliberate placement of references can cause the viewer to alter this progression independant of the elapsing film, creating a set of symbiotic viewing dimensions.

But what makes a truely good movie? Is it how well cinematic devices are applies and manipulated? In the end, isn't it about how it makes you feel, what it makes you think about, how it ultimately changes you? For if it doesn't change you at all, what was the point of having seen it. It is just a memory taking up useless space in your mind. That said, this is probably the finest film Spielberg has made in a while, and this is why: it is emotionally far more interesting and relevant than a lot of the sappy stuff he's been putting out. In other words, it makes you think and feel things at the same time, and what it makes you think and feel changes and evolves. It plays with you. Not in a manipulative way. It does it for your own good. At many points this is a relatively dark movie, especially by Spielberg's standards, but it is not excessively so. Rather it is just the right amount of thought provokation and tragedy and just the right amount of pleasant ending. The kind that is hopeful without being unnecessarily cheesey. There are three kinds of films in this respect. There's the kind that wants to wrap us up in joy at the end and try to make us forget that the world is an ugly place. Then there's the kind that resents the tradition of the first kind and tries to show us just how ugly the world is, assuming that somehow by doing this that it's doing us a favor. Then there's the third kind, which realizes that the only thing the second kind accomplishes is presenting us with a theatrically perverse world view that just makes us uncomfortable, and that the first kind is equally pointless because those movies teach us nothing about ourselves and our world with their naivity. "Minority Report" is of the third kind. It says something without being excessively scary or insultingly comforting.

Like any great movie, the strengths of this movie are not only numerous but difficult to write about as well, since it is not easy to convey how well the different elements of the film work together to create a cohesive whole, which is where "Minority Report" really excels. In an age and industry where the final product is often substantially lacking in unity and relies on the power of its superficially button-pushing pieces to compensate for its inability to come together, "Minority Report" is much more than the sum of its components, and serves as a shining example of how advancing film technology can be used for good instead of mediocrity.

Recommended:
Yes