Minority Report

peterwayner writes: "Everyone has heard stories of odd coincidences from cousins who call each other simultaneously or professors making the same discovery, but there may be no better proof of synchronicity than Steven Spielberg's charcoal grey rendering of Philip Kindred Dick's short story, "Minority Report." This tale of police who solve crimes before they are committed reached the theaters just a few weeks after the United States learned that even citizens are being locked up without a trial or a lawyer because they might turn out to be terrorists." Read the rest of his review below.

The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is, a good murder mystery conceived well before September 11th retelling a short story that was published long ago in 1956. The movie is half a work of philosophy and half a head-scratching what-if narrative exploring the merger of computers, extra-sensory perception, and genetic research. All of this is painted on the screen in the sad muted browns, sepias, blues and greys of an amateur watercolorist who can't keep the colors from turning to mud.

The conceit is the kind of classic conundrum that made science fiction great: the police in 2054 can tap the minds of three "pre-cogs" who see visions of murders a few hours before they will happen. Tom Cruise plays a cop who flies off in a jet pack to nab the soon-to-be-bad guys and lock them away before they kill. Can we really be sure the crime will be committed just as the pre-cognitives predict? Cruise is an earnest believer in the system's perfection until, it should be obvious, the system implicates him in the pre-murder of someone he's never met.

The yarn unfolds as a long string of chase scenes mixed with some flashbacks and some pre-cognitive dodges. Cruise's character, we're told, is a fast runner and he spends plenty of time running fast. The plot is crisp and layered enough to unfold several times. The hinge points are as good as the philosophical question they serve.

The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary, with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19-year-old in an art school in Southern California. The unity of vision that delivered the oily dystopia of Bladerunner is missing this time. I wouldn't be surprised if someone tightened the budget screws in the middle of the film and sent them scrambling to save money on some scenes.

The tone coming from the actors is also a bit uneven. Spielberg managed to toss in funny moments in the Indiana Jones trilogy and whole schtick came together with the amazing certainty of comic-book escapism. The bits of humor in this movie's chase scenes, though, ruin the nervous paranoia and amped-up tension crackling through the narrative's ganglia. Is this supposed to be summer joy ride or a serious exploration of the meaning of justice?

These errors in execution don't matter too much because the storyline is so strong and central to our current struggle with terrorism. No one probably wants to hear that Dick wrote this story just a few years after the Supreme Court finally decided that it wasn't really legal to lock up Japanese-Americans on the off chance that they might take their orders from Tokyo. The movie theater where I saw the film is only a few miles from the prison that held much of Baltimore's City Council during the Civil War.

Despite the uncomfortable fact that moments like these happen again and again in history, there's no way to escape wondering whether Spielberg is some kind of pre-cog being who gets his version of the zeitgeist delivered early. The timing is just eerie.

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Peter Wayner thinks his new book, Translucent Databases is about ten years ahead of its time. His book about steganography, Disappearing Cryptography , may be a few months late."

Piece of advice...

[NanoGator]

In the first paragraph of the summary say: "Go see this movie" or "Don't go see this movie".

*afeared of Lone Gunmen Spoilers*

Re:Could someone just please explain...

[Dephex Twin]

Is this a serious question? I'll answer in any case. We're not talking about racial minorities here, if that's your thinking. A minority report is this: [pforum.org]

"After a majority of members of a committee agree on its report (majority report), members who disagree with the majority may write a dissenting report. This is called a minority report. Both reports are then submitted to the full meeting of the Assembly (i.e., the plenary) where the minority report may (by majority vote of the plenary) become its majority report."

Basically it is, I believe, a dissenting opinion.

mark

Re:Terrorists?

[graft]

Maybe you haven't been reading the same newspapers as I have... Abdullah Al-Mujahir was, last I heard, a U.S. citizen who is being held indefinitely by the military without being charged with anything. So... unless you'd like to back your comments up with some clarification, you're nothing but a troll.

Re:Terrorists?

[Jobe_br]

Not according to this:

http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-lawyer -attacks26.story?coll=bal%2Dhome%2Dheadlines [sunspot.net]

The US citizen from Louisiana is still locked up in a military prison and is being denied an attorney, much less a trial! (And that news is from today, 6/26/02.

Re:Spielberg annoys to the end

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't agree more. Minority Report was an awful movie for those reasons and these few extra:

• Upon being cited for a future murder, the protagonist decides that he should run, for no other explanation than, "everyone runs".
• The protagonist could have just asked to be locked in a room until the murder date had passed thereby making the prediction bunk.
• The doctor who does the protagonists surgery claims he was locked up sometime in the past by his patient. He explains while the patient is passing out from drugs that he is about to exact his revenge. What comes of it? Nothing...
• After having his eyes replaced to get past security, he goes to his office and uses his old eye in a baggy to get in. Point of getting eyes done? Maybe it was for the laugh of seeing him chase them down a hall after dropping them. har har har.
• Yes, having Speilburg explain a completely typical ending over and over and over during the last 45 minutes made me dream of my futures crimes.

Constitution guarantees rights to "persons"

[yerricde]

The people we are locking up are NOT citizens of the USA.

Even so, the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9 [wikipedia.com], Amendment 5 [wikipedia.com], and Amendment 6 [wikipedia.com]) guarantees rights to "persons", not just to "citizens." From Article 1, Section 9: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." But does this wag-the-dog war on terrorism require such a suspension of habeas corpus?

Re:This movie SUCKED HUGE - are you people morons?

[Grab]

Film's not yet out over here. But...

Of course some of it's going to _appear_ derivative of other films. It's based on a book by Phil K. Dick, the guy who wrote the book "Bladerunner" was based off. The guy who had a massive hand in inspiring Gibson and others to go cyberpunk in the 80s. It's gonna be derivative in the same way that "Lord of the Rings" is derivative of "Willow" and "The Dark Crystal".

Grab.