A very underrated movie.

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2002)

First, I'm not a natural Steven Spielberg fan and I'm not a Tom Cruise fan. I usually strongly dislike most of their work.
However, Minority Report forces both of them out of their respective safety zones. Cruise was pretty good in Vanilla Sky where he tolerated a total facial destruction as a key part of the plot. Once again, in MR, he's not a afraid to look bad -- emotionally or physically. It's hard to believe this one time smirking "pretty boy" can be so gritty and he does it convincingly.
Spielberg laid an egg with AI, but here he does a good job of convincing you that you are in the year 2054, moreso than more future set movies.
The movie has some interesting homage subtleties -- throwback to Kubrick movies and style, for example. And except for a couple of really dumb plot holes, it's pretty tight and unpredictable, even when it's being predictable (which itself should be predictable in a movie about predictions!).
I'm usually the first to make the "too long" complaint, but the movie is trying to say a lot about its characters in the small scale, and also about the social reaction to crime on a larger scale.
How far are we willing to go for security? I think that we're constantly trying to balance freedom and security. We often get it wrong -- the WW II imprisonment of Japanese-Americans, overzealous police, unconstitutional detainment of "persons of interest" regarding terrorism. From hindsight, we usually get it right. Spielberg offers a sense of foresight in this movie. Hopefully, we'll get it right.
Enjoy the movie.