Thought-provoking and well-told movie.

Rating: 8/10 (27 June 2002)

"Minority Report" holds your interest all the way through. It takes pains to set up its basic framework of new ideas (the pre-cogs) clearly, and although this makes the first half-hour of the movie irrelevant to the plot, Spielberg's skill is such that this background information is not only a necessary precursor to the gist of the movie, but also exciting for the viewer.
It follows from this that "Minority Report"'s strengths are its plot and its ideas. The ability of the actors and director means that even when the plot descends into a cliched pursuit of a fugitive, as it does sometimes, the movie doesn't flag.
The movie does sometimes renege on the premises it set up, and bend the rules of what the pre-cogs can do, as a means of setting up thrilling or tear-jerking scenes, but it's still very watchable. It's a little disappointing that the world of 2054 is more or less like today except with a lot more product placement - but hopefully, some of the companies who paid handsomely for their names to be mentioned will go the way of Pan Am in "2001".