another indication why Spielberg is one of the great movie artists

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 2002)

`Minority Report' is the latest audacious triumph from America's premier filmmaker, Steven Spielberg. Unlike most successful directors, who are content to rest on their laurels and keep producing works of similar theme and content, Spielberg is not afraid to test the limits of his medium by producing works that are both spellbinding and visionary. He is even willing to risk alienating a mass audience unequipped or unwilling to come along with him on his journey of discovery (which partly explains the relative box office failure of his masterful `A.I.' in 2001). It is ironic that Spielberg, who is often charged (falsely) will being largely responsible for the `dumbing down' of American movies over the past several decades, is now making more intelligent and adult-oriented films than virtually anyone working in Hollywood today.
The theme of `Minority Report' is very similar to the one found in `A Clockwork Orange': just how far are we willing to go in trading away a person's civil rights in order to achieve a society devoid of the threat of crime and violence. In `Orange,' the society of the future attempted to head criminality off at the pass by `reprogramming' potential criminals before they had the chance to actually commit the crimes. `Minority Report,' based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, creates a future society that has managed to find a way to do virtually the same thing, only, in this case, scientists have enlisted the aid of genetic mutants who have the ability to witness murders before they happen and can then pass that information on to the authorities. Law enforcement now becomes a matter of apprehending and imprisoning criminals BEFORE they have even committed the crime. The problem arises when John Anderton, one of the `Pre-Crime' agency's top cops, is himself shown to be a future murderer. The plot of the film becomes, essentially, the classic chase story, in which an `innocent' man must elude his pursuers while at the same time unraveling the clues that will ultimately lead to his proving his innocence. From this material, writers Scott Frank and John Cohen have fleshed out an intricate and fascinating plot that keeps us guessing all the way to the film's finale.
In many ways, though, it is not in the narrative details that `Minority Report's true greatness lies (after all, this story is basically a redo of this year's earlier, abysmal `Imposter,' which, by the way, was also derived from a Dick story). It is the vision that Spielberg brings to the material that sets it apart. Rarely have we ever seen a future world brought so vividly and believably to life as it is here. Set in 2054, the film is a total visual masterpiece. Aided by astonishing production design, cinematography and special effects, Spielberg has created a universe unlike any we have seen before. One of his most triumphant moves is to not try and imagine the future in totally unfamiliar terms. Most of the clothes and furnishings seem strangely similar to what we have today. The effect of this is to help us identify with the characters in a way that might not have been possible had everything been made to seem alien and unrecognizable. What the filmmakers do emphasize in their vision of the future world is the constant barrage of audio/visual stimuli that come in the form of things like personalized holograms and animated periodicals which pinpoint just how close our own world is moving towards this sort of all-encompassing sensory overload.
In a day and age in which even the most elaborate special effects can elicit a yawn from the audience, Spielberg still shows that he has the ability to dazzle us. There is a chase scene done on a vertical superhighway that far surpasses anything in this summer's `Spiderman' or `Attack of the Clones' for sheer breathtaking ingenuity and excitement. In fact, on the visual/special effects level alone, `Minority Report' makes those other two films look like first-year film school pikers. It's also impossible to convey just how extraordinarily brilliant cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's work is on this film. With his muted color scheme and emphasis on glowing whites, Kaminski brings a true otherworldly quality to Spielberg's vision.
Like all great Spielberg films (and there are so many we can't even count them anymore), `Minority Report' packs a wallop both in the overwhelming intensity of its action sequences and in the quiet moments of subtle reflection where the filmmaker affords us glimpses into the workings of the human heart. The director is helped immeasurably in the first case by the brilliant editing of Michael Kahn, and in the second by the outstanding performance of Tom Cruise in the lead role. Cruise has rarely brought such dramatic intensity or such emotional depth to any character the way he does to John Anderton. The long delayed and long anticipated collaboration between one of the world's greatest directors and one of the world's most charismatic stars has resulted in a film worthy of both of their talents and reputations.
In a time when filmmakers like George Lucas seem mired in the successes of their past, Spielberg continues to move ahead and to develop ever more as an artist. Even if he were to stop making movies today, Spielberg's oeuvre would put him in the pantheon of the world's greatest film artists of all time. But let us hope he will continue to make films for a very long time to come. We eagerly await all those future masterpieces.