Lackluster

Rating: 5/10 (20 July 2010)

Minority Report is a futuristic sci-fi action film directed by Stephen Spielberg. It is set in the year 2054 and murder is now a thing of the past thanks to three prophet-like beings called the Precognatives. The Precogs, as they are called, have the ability to see a murder before it happens. The Precrime Institute uses their ability to go out and stop these murders from occurring and arrest the murderer before they ever commit their crime. Tom Cruise (Top Gun, Born on the Fourth of July) plays the chief of Precrime Police John Anderton. The film begins by introducing us into the seemingly picture-perfect world where there is no murder. Of course something this perfect has to has its flaws, and Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) is sent in to find these flaws. His introduction kicks off a chain of events which leads to the real story, when the Precogs see Chief Anderton himself commit a murder 36 hours in the future. Anderton proceeds to flee and the chase begins.
As this plot unfolds a mystery is unraveled that can keep your attention for a while, but eventually becomes tedious and overlong. A lot of this is due to Mr. Tom Cruise. I personally am not a fan of Cruise at all. Nine times out of then he delivers a lackluster performance and never convinces me that he is acting, so much as pretending. Anderton's backstory concerning his dead son and ex-wife ends up playing a major role in the mystery and due to Cruise's stale acting, I wasn't invested in the character by this point. The idea of Precrime is an interesting and intriguing concept, yet it isn't executed as well as it could be with a lacking script and an unconvincing main character.
A movie with the name Spielberg attached to it should almost always be visually stunning. Sadly, this is one area where Minority Report lacks to an extent. The futuristic scenery is very nice looking and the whole plot traverses a creative array of settings. Yet Spielberg irritatingly washes out all these potentially beautiful scenes with blinding white light that floods the screen and greatly distracts from everything else. It is also the action sequences which fault the film. There's nothing special about them and often times they are unbelievable and even goofy. Some of the scenes extend the laws of physics and gravity to overall silly extents. Spielberg also finds it necessary to throw in comedic relief amidst his action for no apparent reason. Every time something like this happened, instead of being entertained and amused, I was only irritated because the movie obviously couldn't get its priorities straight.
I'll admit that the film picks up towards the end when an interesting twist is revealed, but overall the film lacks in its story and characters and I was mostly disappointed by what an interesting subject matter such as Precrime was able to deliver.