Stunning Visuals and Incredible Story

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2002)

The visual image of the future that we get from Spielberg in Minority Report is awe inspiringly jaw dropping. Yeah. It's that good. But the best part about it is that the eye candy is only there to play along with the story, not to dominate it. Recently it seems as though special effects have been the basis for entire movies where as Spielberg understands that the movie should be the basis for the use of special effects. There are some great action sequences in the beginning of the movie including a jet pack sequence and a "pulse gun" scene; either of which would have been well worth the price of admission. Other details include robotic spiders that can confirm the identity of people in a building in a matter of minutes, cars that glide vertically and horizontally on magnetic strips, mammoth skyscrapers mixed with present day buildings in Washinton D.C., and so many others.
Nothing can compare to the computer interface used by pre-crime to find out the details of the killer. The computer takes the visual images from the Pre-Cogs and plays them with a Precrime officer at the controls. The images can be manipulated by the officer with movements almost like a symphony conductor. It's like an enormous even cooler looking iPhone. Except this was about five years before our world was blessed (cursed?) with the device. Aside from that the overall look of the world is near flawless. The gray world makes the CGI animators job easier and allows the world to remain real and tangible for the audience.
The story is about Precrime's star cop John Anderton - Tom Cruise in perhaps his finest performance ever. Anderton is a man with many flaws, especially since losing his son in a freak poolside disappearance years ago. He does drugs to make the present bearable all while tracking down (alleged) future murderers. It's all fine and dandy until Anderton is the next suspect the Precogs see killing a random man. He goes on the run to try to clear his name, all while DC's finest try to hunt him down in the futuristic world where it's nearly impossible to hide.
Spending hours talking about just the images would be easy, but what really carries this movie is the engrossing story. There are numerous twists and turns, and there are small holes in logic at a few points, but those holes depend on personal opinions and philosophy. It has always been a dilemma to answer the question: "If you stop something from happening that was supposed to happen, doesn't that mean that it really wasn't supposed to happen anyways?" My biggest problem was this: John's supposed future murder was predicted early which meant it was premeditated, but it actually was not, it happened in the heat of the moment, so how could the Pre-Cogs have predicted it so early?
We forget about everything that could be wrong because Tom Cruise is so exciting to watch on screen that nothing else matters sometimes. He is the best action star alive today, but he is also one of the few action stars with highly respectable dramatic talent as well. His turns in Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia, and Jerry Maguire have all been top notch. He is the perfect choice for John Anderton and his collaboration with Spielberg allows him to get back into the high quality of work that we are used to seeing him in.
The supporting cast is extraordinary with standout performances from Max von Sydow - the old and optimistic director of Precrime - Colin Farrell - complex and pessimistic investigator Danny Witwer - and Samantha Morton - Agatha, the most talented Pre-Cog. One of the most memorable lines in the movie comes when Agatha mutters, "Is this now?" It makes us realize that Agatha seeing the present is just as amazing for her as any one of us seeing the future.
There are hundreds of other details, big and small, that make this movie an instant classic. This may sound tacky, but Minority Report shoots for nothing less than perfection, and it succeeds on almost every level.