Free Will and Preforeordestination, as Huck Finn used to say: a real corker

Rating: Null/10 (7 March 2003)

Steven Spielberg excels at directing thrill rides like Jaws and Close Encounters. Lately, though, it seems he's been trying to fluff up his directorial resume with more substantive productions. More often than not, he seems to be in over his head. Minority Report, while visually entertaining  chock full of technical eye candy  is a curious mixture of the inimitable Spielberg style with a substantive issue. This time, he set his target on the problem of human `free will.'
The issue of `free will' is one hell of a good theme. There's a prismatic array of perspectives on the idea, a topic of serious argument for centuries. Erasmus and Luther, for example, had a rollicking good fight over it. But when they angrily smashed their hammers on the anvil of the subject, the sparks that flew up produced both the `Diatribes' and `Bondage of the Will,' works of lasting importance. And people like Emerson, rebelling against the Calvinist belief in free will as the puppet strings of God, claimed god-like autonomy when he boldly declared to the world, `I make my own circumstances.' And then behaviorists like Skinner and Watson sneered at `free will' as a childish fantasy similar to the ignorant Russian peasant's belief that the steam engine had an animating `spirit.' And this isn't even the tip of the iceberg.
But Spielberg  well, he likes to simplify things to the point of being just plain goofy. The `pre-cogs' in this story are brain-damaged people who can see future murders. Their precognition is a `gift,' a natural compensation for their other mental deficiencies. OK, I can buy that. But here's the rub: they are never wrong, but occasionally they `disagree.' Errrr, uuuuh, like, What?? Either they're never wrong, or they're occasionally wrong, but not both. And this absurdity is the mental linchpin of the entire movie. I mean, How could anyone miss it? It's not even presented as a paradox, like the `liar's paradox' that logicians think is so clever. Discrepancies like this run through the entire length of the movie, and eventually make one's head hurt. But, if you like action, it ain't bad.