Disappointing. ***MINOR SPOILERS***

Rating: 6/10 (26 June 2002)

Philip K. Dick's original story brings up all kinds of interesting questions and issues about fate, the ability to choose one's future, human rights, and privacy vs. security. Spielberg develops these ideas to a certain extent throughout the film, and in some instances, he succeeds brilliantly. Unfortunately, he also gives us a lackluster mystery that is full of plot holes and just as obvious as any other clichÃ©d, popcorn movie `whodunit.' One brilliant scene featuring a treatment of Dick's ideas finds Tom Cruise's John Anderton, accused of murder, and Samantha Morton's Agatha, one of the precogs, in the apartment of the man that Anderton is supposed to kill. The acting from Cruise and Morton and the situation that their characters were in was absolutely riveting. The thoughtful source material and successful moments like the apartment scene show what potential the movie had.

In a film of such potential, scenes like the one in which the precrime detention center guard asks Anderton's wife how she got in grate on my nerves. Spielberg ignores the obvious plot hole in the situation and has Mrs. Anderton proudly display Mr. Anderton's eyes with a triumphant look on her face as if the audience will go, `wow, isn't she smart!' Spielberg obviously wanted this movie to be intelligent and appealing to one's intellect at least to some degree, yet he puts stuff like this in the movie. What does he expect us to do, turn our minds off and on depending on the moment? I just can't enjoy a movie that has such reckless treatment of theme and tone in it. One moment we're watching a truly brilliant scene like the one with Anderton and Agatha in the apartment bedroom, and in others we're watching unnecessary, grotesquely failed attempts at humor, like Anderton getting his butt patted by a freaky nurse and drinking rotten milk or watching a man get pleasured by a virtual prostitute.
I'm disappointed with Minority Report because it tempted me by appealing to my intellect with interesting ideas and then turned around and insulted my intelligence. I enjoy a mindless popcorn movie as much as the next guy, but if a movie is going to attempt a degree of depth by bringing up ideas that it wants the audience to think about, then it had better be prepared to tell the story in a way that will stand up to thoughtful scrutiny.