Minority Report is not always the easiest film to digest. Still, Steven Spielberg focuses on the characters and the story, blending them perfectly with the special effects and environment to give us a truly unique film and movie-going experience. Things never look cheap as the director dips his creative toe once again into the darker side of things.
Based on the 1956 short story by Philip K. Dick, a master of the literary sci-fi world, the film deposits the viewer into the year 2054. Here we meet Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise), a man in control of the Department of Pre-Crime, a unit designed to stop crimes before they happen. Anderton watches over “Pre-Cogs,” humans with precognitive abilities who exist drifting in a flotation tank, their brains, hooked up to computers, are able to pick up the thoughts of those planning a murder, a premeditated murder, and then alert the police.
With Washington being the home to the Department of Pre-Crime, this opens up all kinds of professional jealousy and resentment, and Spielberg seamlessly weaves this realism with the sci-fi tech and themes of the film. The Director of Pre-Crime (Max von Sydow), an agent of the DOJ (Colin Farrell), they are just some of the characters Spielberg makes real enough to help make the setting seem so real. The attention to detail in this film is mind-boggling at times, but with Spielberg at the helm, there remain surroundings of hope, even in the darker times, instead of straight despair.
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When the Pre-Cogs predict a crime will be committed by John Anderton, the setting seems clear. However, a “minority report” is filed by one of the Pre-Cogs, meaning one of the groups of three has disagreed with the findings, so now another idea has been put forth. Is it possible to fool the Pre-Cogs and their system? If so, that would be a perfect crime. Anderton goes on the run, looking for many answers, leading to some truly spectacular sets, action scenes, and moments of plot and story. Spielberg shows off his skill, weaving it all into a coherent story and a damn interesting one.
The narrative drive of the film helps to weave the details of this world flawlessly into the overall story, not relying on special effects and big explosions to gloss over details that some might not think important enough to worry about. Longtime Spielberg composer John Williams and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski are at their best here but in different ways. Williams’s score is much less about big orchestral movements and more about the tension and silences, keys to the film. Kaminski gives the film a weird yet telling look, dark shadows meet silvers and greys and the colorless tones complement Williams’s quieter score quite nicely.
A film like this could have gone sideways or been completely different in someone else’s hands. Cruise is the star power on screen, but Spielberg makes him seem more human than a movie star. The rest of the cast has room to shine, especially Samantha Morton, who plays the gifted Pre-Cog Agatha Lively. She says little and seems scared of her own shadow, a stark contrast to the powerful form of Cruise. Again, Spielberg makes it all work, understanding the nuances of filmmaking so much better than most and knowing that technology is a tool to use, not rely on as a crutch.
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At first glance, it’s easy to forget about a film like Minority Report. After all, director Steven Spielberg has dazzled us with many notable films over the years. Just four years before Minority Report, Spielberg gave us Saving Private Ryan, a film with some of the most haunting and realistic depictions of war we have ever seen on film.
That being said, Minority Report should never be forgotten as it was a triumph, not simply as a sci-fi/action drama, but as a film-going experience. Haunting and thought-provoking, with a director at the top of his game, the movie requires more than one viewing to truly appreciate the daring ideas, delivering time and time again.
