Unfinished symphony, unfinished film

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 2002)

"Minority Report" is a mess from the obvious holes in the story (a premeditated murder that isn't, a drug seeking father who mourns his dead son by mysteriously divorcing himself from his loving wife) to the poor plot and character development (3 bodies plopped on a watery bed who we have to accept as being able to decipher the future, a Holy-Grail type search for a 'minority report' embedded inside one of the female subjects). It has a storyline that, like Shubert's Unfinished Symphony, seems unfinished even as the film mercilessly hurries to a contrived ending. It is sad that with such talent, Steven Spielberg, John Williams, Philip K. Dick, Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Max Von Sydow, and Colin Farrell, the film would come to this. The film should have been told without the convoluted and unbelievable twists and turns ( the arrested Agatha coming back to life to selectively remember what will happen, the contrived bad boss portrayed as milquetoast , the cunning federal agent who magically puts all the pieces together before his fatal end). Toned down and told from a more philosophical viewpoint (yes, we can believe in soothsayers) with better character development (particularly between Atherton and his wife and also the three future telling misfits), this would have been a more sensible and intelligent film rather than the mess that we have.