Don't Believe The Hype And Don't Think Too Deeply...

Rating: 7/10 (22 June 2002)

...because if you get suckered in by the hype or think too long about the movie, you won't like it.
MINORITY REPORT is visually one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time. The FX are good, the washed out overbright coloration of the shots are perfect for a harsh spotlight turned on the future, and many of the scenes are brilliantly staged. And on first glance, the story is quite engaging. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the chief of Washington, DC's Precrime Unit, an experimental police force using the psychic talents of three "Pre-Cogs" to predict murders before they happen, thus dropping the DC homicide rate to zero. But on the eve of the Precrime unit going nationwide, Anderton finds himself in one of the Pre-Cogs' visions, and now has to escape a future that has already been predicted. Are the Pre-Cogs always right? If you know the future, can you change it? How does free choice and free will mesh with a crime unit based on prediction of your future, and how do they know you didn't change your mind before you went through with your crime? And what does all this do to the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of the American justice system?
Then you stop and think about it for a minute, and the story falls apart.
SPOILERS BELOW...CLICK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM...

The ways in which this plot falls apart are many and varied. Some examples:
-- If the chief of precrime is suspected of a crime, why don't they remove his retinal-coded security access? And even after he's locked up and put in jail, they still don't remove it. Sloppy, sloppy writing.
-- Why bring in the notion of a "minority report" (a Pre-Cog vision that differs from the "official" version, erased from the official records but stored in the lead Pre-Cog's memories) if you don't intend to use it? We never see one, and it plays no part in the film's outcome.
-- If you're paying attention, you'll figure out who the real villain is the first time they have an extended scene with him. You'll even figure out his motive and a few other things about him. At least, I did. Really, it was that easy.
-- Why does the Pre-Cog pool have an emergency drain? It serves no useful purpose except to provide Anderton with a convenient escape route.
-- These Pre-Cogs are a fluke, an accident, a genetic experiment gone awry according to their creator, and yet they plan to take this program nationwide? How? Create more? Make the ones they've got see more? Which leads directly to the next problem...
-- Can the Pre-Cogs see beyond DC? If so, why don't they? We're told from the start this is a one-city unit--what, does someone erect a psychic border around the nation's capitol? What about the Maryland and Virginia suburbs--what, no one who commits a murder in DC lives in the burbs or vice versa?
-- It's all too convenient that the Pre-Cogs can only work as a unit, particularly when you've already introduced the notion of a "minority report" (one seeing different things than the others, implying at least two different trains of thought are possible). When the unit gets broken up and suddenly no more murders can be predicted, the film takes its biggest leap of logic, and I immediately found myself going "Huh?"
Still, though, there are worse ways to spend $8. If you like your films visually interesting and you're willing to completely suspend logic for 2.5 hrs., go see it. Just don't buy into the hype that this is the movie of the year or any other such nonsense.