just needed that touch more integrity

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 2003)

In 2054 Washington, the cop in charge of a pilot programme using human precognitives to detect crime before it is committed is himself accused of an upcoming murder and goes on the run to prove his innocence.
Minority Report is a frustrating piece of future-noir; a classic example of a good film which could have been great but for the infuriating compromises of mainstream Hollywood.
So much about this film is excellent; the thoughtfully imaged future, taking modern concepts of computer technology, architecture, consumerism and urban living to believable representations of where they are likely to be in 50 years time. Social concepts of disfunctionality, drug abuse, abandonment and invasion of privacy are equally well observed, and done so with impressively little moral comment.
The photography is suitably grainy, harsh and washed out, the casting excellent and the premise, very much influenced by American detective fiction, agreeably stuffed with plot twists and memorable characters.
There are basically only two things wrong with Minority Report, but they are both serious misconceptions which damage the films integrity and originality. The first involves the action sequences, which jar from the otherwise sombre and realistic tone and put the characters straight into over-the-top superhero territory. Cruise leaps across skyscraper-climbing cars like Spiderman. With the aid of a jet-pack he goes flying across buildings, through ceilings and plummeting down alleyways like Superman. He emerges from frantic fist-fights on automobile production lines without a hair out of place like James Bond.
It doesn't need to be like this. Minority Report is an action thriller crying out for realism and suspense delivered by believable human characters with proper physical limitations, not the gratuitous pyrotechnics of comic books. Spielberg shows a loss of nerve here, like he wants to remind us that he can still compete with the Wachowski brothers in the OTT action-showman stakes and never mind how out of place it all looks with the rest of his film.
The second mistake is even more grave. Without giving too much away, there is a point about three-quarters of the way through the film when the plot comes to a shocking, downbeat, but entirely appropriate end. It completely makes sense in context of the plot and in terms of the film's, bleak dystopian viewpoint. Popcorn-munchers and action junkies might moan, while still finding it acceptable; finding it true. Instead the Hollywood bean-counters, the marketeers and worst of all Spielberg and Cruise themselves can't bring themselves to go along with it. Faced with the choice between an artistically correct conclusion or a cynical, audience-friendly, uplifting and utterly jarring curtain they pump for the latter. By this stage of their careers both of these Hollywood powerhouses should have the guts to go for what's right rather than what's blandly thought to be commercially acceptable; but neither, it would appear, have quite enough conviction. The dollar wins out in the short term while the film's reputation, which could have been gigantic, loses out almost immediately.
The difference between a great Hollywood movie and a merely good one is often simply a matter of courage and integrity in the script, in the cutting room or in the board room. Spielberg and Cruise had another Blade Runner right in the palm of their hands here, and let it slip.