Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Often science-fiction movies become action movies with a spice of science-fiction. There is the occasional futurist vision with new gadgets and life made better many years later. But often, cinema decides to showcase such visions in the beginning and then all but forget them as being nothing more than one big joke.

With Minority Report we are presented with same carbon copy futuristic introduction that the year is fifty-two years in the future. (As of 2002). Cars, which many of us love to spend time in – drive themselves up and down walls and perfectly merge in traffic without a single honk of the horn. Our homes know that when we say “I’m home”, they are to turn on lights and play relaxing classical music. Walls know how to hide their boring contemporary style when we ask them to project visual memories of our loved ones.

We love technology and we’d love to have the technology we see in movies. But, that doesn’t mean that technology loves us.

Minority Report based off a short story by Philip K. Dick, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise – is the classic example of a world based on technology that society both desires and fears – and forgets about at the expense of humans. It’s easy to see Pre-Cog’s – physic individuals who work day in and day out to predict crime before it happens as being saviors who save innocent lives. But, it’s easy to not see at what expense our safety, our freedom, has caused. Only the select few, get to enter the temple and see a God for what, it, or he, or she, really is.

John Anderton/Tom Cruise is a dedicated cop. Dedicated to saving lives from those who want to kill, before they get a chance to actually kill. Using a piece of technology that runs off of the brain waves of psychic’s, Anderton is able to see clues of crimes before they happen. Using advanced computer technology, he deciphers these clues and rushes to the scene to save the day.

But what happens one day if that technology turns on you?

Although a very important question pondered by the likes of James Cameron in his Terminator trilogy (soon to be fourth one!) – the real question is…what happens one day if those who control the technology turn on you?

Will the technology really know right from wrong?

It seems that in 36 hours, John Anderton is going to kill a man. And, yet, Anderton does not know the guy he’s going to kill. Bushing aside the common filler that Spielberg produces of John getting away from his common friends who used to work with him to catch bad guys – Speilberg makes a very strong point that although the future may be known and seemingly perfect there is one human trait that no one can predict down to the small division of a second.

Choice.

We may have to live in a world spilling over in technology, but we still have a choice.

Perhaps the easiest reason to rent/buy Minority Report is that it gives us everything. As a movie it may a clear point to insist characters can/have a choice – but it also makes all that is positive also negative. We never get a clear sense of where we are supposed to go or think allowing us the freedom to embark on that path alone. We can use our own imagination while watching this film – a treat since most movies plain as day lead us with a leash on how we are to think and dream.

Yet, perhaps one of the finer things about Minority Report is the future isn’t really too far off. The police in the movie still fire guns loaded with bullets. Computer screens may be larger and controlled by devices strapped to one’s fingers, but who would have thought that mouse’s today would be wireless and could be operated on any surface. Is it really too extreme to imagine that a collection of psychic’s could predict the future and help prevent crime? Microsoft is working on a project to meld technology and home appliances together so that we could in the future control all our electrical appliances with simple voice commands. Many years ago the army fooled around with devices that one could strap to their back allowing them to fly around like Superman. We already have stun devices that send electrical shocks out to a criminal to subdue them.

What Spielberg has done is to not think too far out in the future. Since it makes it so easy to drown those thoughts in pure fantasy. Instead of perhaps thinking about what could become reality.

In terms of acting, Minority Report really is a Tom Cruise movie. It’s been a Cruise before – but not to this degree. All other characters are unimportant – even Danny Witwer/Colin Farrell who has received quite a bit of media attention since appearing in this movie. But, like Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Spielberg picks and chooses each character so that each one has an individual flair to add to the story, to make up the beginning, to help create the action, and formulate the conclusion. Many may find it hard to watch such a movie – since with so many characters it can become hard to acknowledge what they mean, while at the same time make it easy for us to acknowledge that all we should care about is the main star. But without them, the movie would be nothing more than pasta and tomato sauce. And my personal taste is…

It’s the spices that make a great meal.

Before I conclude, I’ll say this. Forgive me, but I had to watch this movie on VHS. I know, I know, but I wanted to see this and I couldn’t wait for Netflix or Blockbuster to have it available on DVD. Spielberg may present a creative look at the future one that includes images captured on glass disc’s where the amount of information seems endless – but in the present, video stores still stock 20 copies of a movie, split between VHS and DVD. Yes, I had a choice. I could have waited. But, I’m glad I didn’t. Yet, I would have liked to have the clarity that only a DVD holds.

Overall – I know this is personally two for two, of Steven Spielberg science-fiction movies that I have liked. I think it was wise of him to turn his back on franchise films such as Jurassic Park and turn to making films that he enjoyed to make and wanted to make, even if he made them for his fellow film colleagues. Plus, I’m glad that he has realized that his best came by looking at the past – but his imagination really is about the future and the adventure of it slowly creeping up on us.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: VHS