spielberg keeps growing

Rating: Null/10 (31 October 2002)

Hot on the heels of his most audacious and adult work, "A.I.," comes this dark and challenging science fiction film from Spielberg based on a short story by the dark & challenging Philip K. Dick. It reminded me a lot of "The End of Violence," the Wim Wenders film with the same theme, a future where crime is eliminated at the cost of privacy and freedom, raising some fundamental and provocative questions. Special effects are of course dazzling, and Tom Cruise lends his character the ambiguities of a damaged drug-addicted hero, I think P.K. Dick would have approved of the tone and the vision. Spielberg has indeed grown up at last, facing life's ambiguities and moral dilemmas that are not solved by a swelling John Williams finale...