Really pretty bad

Rating: 4/10 (11 August 2002)

The thing I found most surprising about this movie is that Spielberg directed it. This is just not up to his standards. Cruise does a decent job but there really isn't anything that can make this film believable.
I was kind of worried that the film would present a possible future where everything is watched, monitored and recorded, like 1984. Then I suppose they could assign probabilities to future actions and prevent crimes before they happen, as was the subject of an Asimov short story.
Thankfully they chose a completely impossible, ridiculous psychic imaging prediction instead. Look people, I hate to make life a little more mundane for you, but there are no psychic abilities, they are completely impossible and there is nothing to worry about from any con artist pretending to ascertain your future. If they weren't impossible, someone would be able to walk off with James Randi's $1000000 prize (see www.randi.org).
So, anyway, I'm glad they didn't make the movie too realistic or present an actual possible future because the movie is depressing enough as it is. I can't imagine how awful the world would be to actually have popup ads that knew who you were everywhere you go. Think about it. Would you actually want streaming advertisements everywhere you look? Should we allow that to happen to our society?
The movie wasn't all bad, Max von Sydow was good as usual. The stunt/special effects work was decent, if rather pale in comparison to some of the other movies coming out lately (LoTR).
But the worst thing was the plot, which really couldn't be saved by any effect or actor. I think the whole thing was meant to make people realize that we have to get control of our essential freedoms and how the government and purveyors of trivia like the media companies are trying to not only control but actually ruin our lives. I hope that the people who lost 140 minutes of their lives watching this turkey can get something back out of it in the realization that we can prevent the destruction of our freedom.
Please people, don't let the message go unnoticed. If you let the evil people out there continually take your freedoms away, we'll end up with a horrid world like the one presented in Minority Report.