True Science Fiction

Rating: 10/10 (7 August 2002)

There's one big difference between Science Fiction, with a capital "SF"
and space opera. In SF, the writer takes one "impossible" thing and
asks, "what would happen if this were possible?" In SF, differently from space opera, special effects aren't strictly
needed, that's why Hollywood prefers space opera. In "Minority Report",
however, Spielberg took one "hard" SF story and rendered it to film.
The result was stunning. For about 2 hours, I completely forgot about
anything else. It's the kind of film that one would like to invite the
writer to discuss things over. The intrincacy of the whole story is
resumed at one pont where one character pushes a ball over a table and
another catches it. Anderton: "Why did you catch it?". Witwer: "Because
it was going to fall". Anderton: "But it didn't. Because you caught
it". That's the whole point about SF, taking ideas and seeing what
happens when you twist them in a knot. Plot, acting, and effects,
although good in this movie, are secondary. Spielberg, as he usually
does, did a great movie, and, in this one, he had an excellent story to
begin with. I give it a 10 out of 10. (One minor nit: at one point,
Anderton is being chased by the cops in an automated factory that
builds one car every few seconds. He finally emerges out inside a
just-finished car. That is the only car that comes out of that factory.
What happened to the other cars we saw being built?)