Spielberg + Cruise: A marriage made in heaven

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2002)

Perhaps the two most powerful and influential people in filmmaking over the past twenty years have finally come together to make a movie. And of course, since we are talking about two professionals and visionaries who have never rested on their laurels, they have created something to behold. Sci - fi, action, who-dunit, this movie is rich and layered. Cruise puts in a convincing performance as John Anderton, a detective at the department of pre - crime in Washington D.C. Colin Farrel and Max Von Sydow also deliver strong supporting performances. There hasn't been a murder in six years. The system seems flawless and is about to go national. Unfortunately there are a few glitches that could prevent this from happening. When it is preordained that Anderton himself will murder someone in less than two days, he leads his former colleagues on a wild goose chase that contains some classic sequences. In one scene the police track him to an apartment building and deploy small mechanical spiders that perform retinal scans on all of the warm bodies in the building. This is just one example of the many brilliant ideas Spielberg created while in his "think tank", to which he invited many prominent scientists and futurists. The special effects in this movie put those of Spider - Man and Episode III to shame, not because of how much cgi there is, but how it is used. Spielberg is a technical wizard but knows that special effects are just a way to enhance his vision, and that the real meat of a film is characters and plot. Minority Report is a masterful work which is deserving of the millions it is sure to make at the box office.