Mostly outstanding. Please chop off the ending!

Rating: Null/10 (15 July 2002)

I am going to start this review by talking about the ending, because it is the worst part of the film, and I want to get it out of the way, and finish on a more positive note. I'm also going to compare it to A.I. quite a bit, as I think the two films go together, possibly intentionally.
So many Hollywood films undermine all the tension and atmosphere they create by tacking on a "happy ending"; all loose ends must be tied, the villain must die, and the hero must be inducted into a nuclear family. The reason that I find this particularly sad in the case of Minority Report is that Steven Spielberg is one of the few directors who has the power to be able to override these by-the-numbers script decisions.
The only reason that I can think of for the ending being as it is is that Spielberg actually wanted it that way. I find this bizarre coming from one of the greatest American directors, but he seems to repeatedly put a fly in the ointment. I really admire the man, but I can't think of many of his films that I don't have serious reservations about. He had already said around the time of A.I. that he was done with appeasing audiences, and the proof seemed to be in the pudding; when A.I. continued past what I thought at the time of viewing to be the "natural" ending, I thought it was going to be one of those typical Hollywood endings, but I was delighted to find that it was instead a brave exploration beyond the ending dictated by "good taste", and a powerful epilogue to the story. Unfortunately, in Minority Report, the reverse was true; I thought: "maybe it won't be so bad, after all, it worked in A.I." But it was bad - real bad.
The last few scenes don't even feel like they are part of the same movie, in a visual or stylistic sense. There are still a few good moments, as Spielberg's talents come through despite himself. However, after coming out of the cinema, I was struggling to remember the main part of the film, because the ending had diluted it so much in my mind. Quite an achievement, as most of Minority Report is outstanding. So let's focus on the good stuff.
The look of the film reminded me of A.I. to an extent. Although the image is grainy, it has a certain cleanliness to it (as opposed to Blade Runner's murkiness). The colours are so muted that they are almost monochrome. The design work is also pretty consistent with A.I., for example the weird bobbly cars. For some reason, the visuals put me in mind of Terry Gilliam's Brazil as well, which is rather ironic if you compare the shot of the house at the end of Gilliam's film with the closing shot of Minority Report. In any case, Minority Report is a seriously good looking film, whether we are seeing two guys talking at a table, or a sprawling CGI cityscape. I am often heard griping about the use of computer generated effects in films (no more so than after seeing that modern day version of the animated sequence in Mary Poppins known as Attack Of The Clones), but here we see how effective they can be when used intelligently, and with regard for the limitations of the technology. There very few shots where I thought the CGI effects looked obvious. Mostly, basic techniques such as matching the grain of the effects to that of the film and keeping the "camera" moving naturally in effects shots meant that the CGI did its job and served the story.
Editing is not the first thing I think of in a Spielberg film. However, there are many very well thought-out scenes, with quite technically complex editing going on. If you were to see a clip of such a scene, you might be reminded of a more MTV-style film like The Matrix. Fortunately, unlike that absurdly overrated film, there is actually some substance under the style. Spielberg knows how to bake a cake before icing it.
The most basic ingredient in this cake, in my view, is the acting, and what a great bunch of performances we get here. We all know that the Cruiser is much more than just a pretty face, and that Max "Fall On Your Sword" Von Sydow is the man, but minor characters such as Peter Stormare's surgeon and Lois Smith's genetic scientist are memorably portrayed, with a good deal of depth. Samantha Morton is extremely beautiful to look at in this film, by virtue of her performance, rather than simply through being made up in the usual "glamourous" way. I have to give a special mention to Jessica Harper, whom I haven't seen in a film for ages. The mother in A.I. really reminded me of Harper when she was younger, so it was interesting to see the latter playing the mother of the "special child" here.
There has been some criticism of the explicitness of some of the imagery and the language in Minority Report. My view is that it is all justified, and I'm glad Spielberg did not hold back, as I felt he did to a degree in A.I. It is a sign of the times that this content is deemed suitable for quite young viewers. Whether this is a good or a bad thing (or how bad a thing it is) has little to do with the film itself.
To conclude, I thought this was an excellent film up until the last few scenes, at which point it just seemed to switch gear completely. Unfortunately, the ending of a film largely influences how you feel about the whole thing after watching it.