Eye-Popping Timesplitting Future-Cops Science-Fiction Thriller

Rating: 6/10 (13 March 2007)

In the year 2054, John Anderton is an expert in the field of Pre-Crime, an experimental system in which three pre-cognitive savants can foresee murders and project their visions onto a screen, and the authorities can arrest the perpetrator before the crime has happened. All is well until John's next case shows him as the murderer. Is it true ? Has someone hacked the system ? He must escape and find out the truth ...
This is a great mix of cerebral science-fiction concept, police conspiracy thriller and blockbuster action movie. Apparently the script had a troubled gestation period featuring umpteen writers and producers, but the end result is a gripping, witty, biting storyline full of ironic twists - after a fight on a car production line our hero finds himself in a newly-made escape vehicle, when he's on the run the iris-recognition software in every store and electronic billboard shouts out his name as he passes, the ambitious detective unwittingly hands a killer the means with which to dispose of him, and the minority report of the title doesn't even exist in Anderton's case. It's also an eye-popping visual futurist's picture, with lots of interesting ideas - I love the wall-hugging cars and those nifty spider-ID machines, although the virtual-reality plasma screen that Cruise uses to push the pre-cogs' visualisations around is a bit silly. The big cast is impressive, with the three leads all strong and amusing performances by Stormare and Nelson particularly, but there are lots of rather anonymous characters as well. I also find the tone of this movie a bit uneven; the first two-thirds are quite escapist, with funny moments like the bit where Cruise chases his own eyeballs down the corridor, but the last forty minutes are rather gloomy, albeit intensely so. It's a great science-fiction film but it's very grey, and I think I would like it more if it were either epic fantasy, like Dune or The Fifth Element, or highly stylised, like Brazil or Blade Runner. It's still terrific entertainment though, made by a master of this genre, with a great hare-brained plot that just hurtles along and fabulous imagery throughout. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.