Intriguing and Original..."Minority Report" soars

Rating: 9/10 (13 February 2005)

When most first hear the plot of "Minority Report", they roll your eyes and think "Sure, whatever." I was certainly one of the many who didn't find the concept intriguing, but, more or less, stupid. I am a huge Tom Cruise fan  but then again, who isn't?  as well as a huge Collin Farrel fan. To see both extreme talents in one movie seemed like heaven. Add Steven Spielberg, one of the great directors of our time, to the mix and you've got a real treat. But with such a silly plot, I doubted the movie could be anything over okay. Needless to say, I was wrong.
In the year 2054, John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) leads a group of cops under a program called "Pre Crime". Pre Crime is the futuristic way to track murderers. Inside a "temple" are three "Pre Cogs". Pre Cogs are basically humans who were born with the gift of seeing murders before they happen. Three of them, the main being Agatha (played by Samantha Morton), are kept inside the temple. Whenever a murder in the Washington D. C. area is about to happen, the Pre Cogs sense it and a short clip of that murder is projected onto a screen. Anderton and his team look the video over and find out where the murder will take place. To put all that in a nutshell: Pre Crime lets cops see murders before they happen, enabling the cops to stop them. That's just the basics right there; the actual system is both more impressive and complex.
Pre Crime is a system used only in Washington D. C. The founder of the system is Lamar Burgess (played by Max von Sydow), who would just love to make Pre Crime go national. Collin Farrel's character is Danny Witwer. Danny is a detective sent by the government to look over Pre Crime; Danny claims that he can find a flaw in the Pre Crime system.
So here's the real start of the story: The Pre Cogs sense a murder coming up. Big deal, right? It's just another D. C. murder for the records, right? Wrong. This time, the killer is none other then John Anderton himself. In about thirty-two hours John is supposed to kill Leo Crow, a man he's never met. Obviously this is a problem, and John is forced to run from his own "employees", now being lead by Danny Witwer.
So, you ask, where does the title come in? I'll skip circles around a spoiler and tell you that a minority report is an alternate way of murder. If I told you anything more then that, I'd have to give away a major plot point. Once you discover the value and meaning of a minority report, the entire film takes a different turn for you.
Tom Cruise is as great as ever as John Anderton. Though he at first seems like a run-of-the-mill cop, we discover he's much more then that. What would have been a lifeless cop is a great one with Cruise in the role. Also exceptional is Collin Farrel as Witwer. I still find it amazing that Farrel can make himself sound American, not his native Irish, in practically every film he does. That proves a good actor.
Every movie has something that could be changed to make it better. Though "Minority Report" is an exceptional movie by most means, it fails in one. That would be the colors the film is shot in. I have never seen a movie that showed so much blue, black, and brown and such little of every other color. Everything in the film has a blue glow; a soft brown in it. The colors can get very distracting and sometimes they seem to take away from the over-all feel of the film. All the shots are nice and clean though, and Spielberg hasn't started using the now-popular "shaky camera" affects yet.
The plot at first seems simple and predictable, but it takes many twists and turns along the way. A plot that seems silly becomes intriguing. The acting is good, the direction is good, and the ending is a sure-fire knockout that just might blow you out of your seat.
MINORITY REPORT: RATED PG-13  VIOLENCE, SOME SEXUALITY, A FEW BAD WORDS 3 ½ OUT OF 4 STARS BOTTOM LINE: INTRIGUING