Minority Report 552
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.
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."
I went and was minority report a few days ago (Score:1, Interesting)
Good review, btw.
I wrote a review too (Score:1, Interesting)
Seen this story before (Score:2, Interesting)
Go watch it and you'll see (Score:3, Interesting)
what does this movie have to do with minorities?
Think of minorities in election results, not populations. To tell you any more would be spoilers. Are you incapable of going to see this movie?
FWIW, I thought it was very good.
setting is excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I disagree. That's one of the strengths. It is ony 50 years in the future, and Spielberg uses a few advances to make it both close to home and alien.
To get all Darko Suvin on the matter for a moment (Suvin is an esteemed critic of and thinker about sf, read his stuff, it rocks), it is clear that the makers of this movie know what their novum (the "difference" that makes it sf) is, and they're sticking to it - precrime. Other lesser nova include the retina-scans and neuroin. What is very, very successfully done is their ability to focus on the important nova and their effects on society without getting too fancy with flying cars and moon malls and so forth.
What I'm trying to say at 4:48 pm after a long hot day is that the movie is a masterful example of putting an alien concept in a familiar context - for maximum effect on the viewer. A bonus is the gritty feel, and it was cute for me as a DC resident to see the future of the city (you know, we have Lexus plants _all over_ Capitol Hill).
Good movie. See it.
Re:I went and was minority report a few days ago (Score:1, Interesting)
I mean, he wouldn't have murdered the dude if he hadn't known about the pre-cogs vision, and he wouldn't have known about the pre-cogs vision unless he was going to go murder the guy. So what gives? How did it all fall into motion?
The Flick (Score:2, Interesting)
Jarring and well done (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought the conception and excution of the film's near future was actually very well done. It is important not to change TOO many things, or you end up with a future that isn't "relatable."
Put another way: I think a mall which is largely recognizable, but has just a few odd tweaks, is a more effective way of delivering future shock than a totally unrecognizable one.
And, realistically, the near future WILL still have lots in common culturally with the current-day and even the past. I don't find the notion of The Gap logo not changing a stretch (however, I might expect it to be a place where geezers go to shop . . . comforting fashions for elderly Gen-Xers).
Stefan
Re:I went and was minority report a few days ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Something missing... but what? (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition, the movie is actually quite different from the original short story, which I guess would be natural when someone like Spielberg tries to expand a short story to a two and half hour blockbuster which is designed to appeal to Joe Consumer.
Minority Report was not very good (spoilers) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry to disagree, but I found the plot clumsy, inefficient, and not particularly thrilling.
Assuming that there was anyone in the audience unfamiliar with the premise, was it necessary to set up the premise in at least four repetative sequences, any one of which would have done the job:
1. In the 15 minute opening arrest sequence.
2. In the 5 minute discussion following that sequence.
3. In the Robocop-like "Precrime" commercial.
4. AGAIN by the tour guide?
Technology was inconsistant in the film:
1. Why didn't they use the spiders in the opening sequence when they didn't know which house it was? In fact, why didn't they just run in and check all the houses instead of having 50 guys just stand there?
2. You think the computers were Steve Jobs inspired? I was SHOCKED that they were using a FLOPPY to move files from computer to computer.
3. What was up with waving your arms around like a conductor to move windows?!
4. What was up with that horrible 3d projections system in Tom Cruise's house? Why would anyone use that? It was like bad UHF reception.
5. "If you don't wait twelve hours... you'll go blind." Or... maybe six.
6. Whats up with a giant organ in the prison room?
7. Don't you think the spider technology would have showed up in lots of other places?
8. If the cops have those stun gun things, why would using bullets be standard issue?
9. Wouldn't the revelation of PSYCHICS have tremendous scientific reprocussions beyond precrime?
10. The ads, which were supposed to be annoying in the story... were annoying in ACTUALITY. Part of the reason I think is that I know that this wasn't tongue-in-cheek made up ads, but ACTUAL ADS from ACTUAL companies who were paying big time subsidies for this VERY REAL product placement. How ironic.
11. Did anyone else get the feeling that this future had about 50 people in it total? I did not feel like this was a "real" world at all.
12. There were just a lot of plain silly and inconsistant things. I did like the cereal box tho.
Action Scenes:
1. The Tom Cruise Plays Car Frogger scene was dull.
2. Were there any other action scenes? I suppose some chases... blah.
3. The action, billed as on the same level as Indian Jones....wasn't.
Characters:
1. Did Tom's drug addiction go anywhere? Did anyone even buy this character?
2. Haven't we seen the "I never said she drowned" "whoops!" about a million times?
3. "Surely by now the precogs have predicted you're going to kill me. So you're caught in a paradox.. bwahaha" How the hell did Tom know what they predicted? They could have predicted what enivitably happened.
4. The surgeon who replaces Tom's eyes gives a big speech about getting screwed over, then does....nothing bad. Fixes the eyes, leaves a nice sandwich.
5. Tom's coworkers at precrime have no problem whatsoever going after him.
6. The precogs were just plain silly.
7. As for Max von Sydow, don't even get me started.
Plot
1. Why did Tom's crime of passion get a full 36 hours of lead time when they had established that such crimes come at the last minute?
2. As the film was kinda winding down, I turned to my friend and predicted not only who the guy Tom was searching for was, but what choice Tom would have and what he would do. I was right, but never could have anticipated...
3. The extra 20 minutes or so following that, which like was totally unnecessary and cheesy.
4. What is the point of putting the precogs in a barn somewhere?
I still don't see why murders stopped by precogs NECESSARILY need to lead to arrests and prosecutions. I mean, say they had stopped the murder of passion at the top of the story-- rather than putting the dreaded headphones on the husband, couldn't they have gotten him into some family counceling? I mean, having a precog to stop a murder doesn't automatically mean you have to prosecute the pre-murderer.
With the 95% positive response on rottentomatoes.com I was expecting something really impressive.. But as time goes, I'm just left with... "well, that was kinda mediocre..." Certainly not at all thought provoking.
I think many critics are smokin' crack.
Re:My one big issue with the film (SPOILER?) (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because they know if they do, they'll get caught and put into hyber-prison. If they were just released, they'd say: "might as well give it a shot", attempted murders would go up, and the pre-cons and officers would have to work that much harder.
This way, they have far fewer cases to process because the disincentive to attempt murder is that much greater.
Re:My one big issue with the film (SPOILER?) (Score:4, Interesting)
You have been warned... stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie.
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I was wondering that myself. At most, book em for attempted murder, not future murder. The other thing I was wondering, is how many would prevent themselves from committing murder, if they were informed of their future, just as Cruise's character was. As Cruise says, knowledge of the future gives you the choice of changing it.
Re:My one big issue with the film (SPOILER?) (Score:5, Interesting)
On one hand, he could murder the person for the good of society, and precrime would stay, and the world would be safe; but he would go to jail.
On the other hand, he could stay in his hotel room, not commit a murder, and prove that his system was a fake; they'd have to set everyone free and murders would start all over again.
"The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick" (Score:2, Interesting)
quoting:
"It is an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months. "
IMO, a must-read for anyone who enjoys Dick's work.
m-
Re:Minority Report was not very good (spoilers) (Score:1, Interesting)
1) Is anybody else completely sick of Tom Cruise? He's even more annoying than Keanu Reeves.
2) What's the deal with the grainy, blue-tinted look? It's just plain fugly. It isn't even original. This kind of look has shown up in numerous supposedly "gritty" movies and has become a cliche. Enough already!
3) The reviewer's complaint about the look being inconsistent is plain stupid. Lots of things from 50, 100 and more years ago are still around. The last house I lived in was built in 1936.
4) And you can't emphasize enough the irony of a film presenting a society swamped in pervasive advertising serving as a pervasive advertising medium itself.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
How do we know that this person was part of Al Qaeda? Because the Bush administration says so?
If he isn't part of a foreign army, what recourse does he have?
This isn't an academic exercise. There are reports that a dozen or so Kuwaiti nationals, who were in Afghanistan doing Peace Corps-type work, are currently incarcerated in Camp X-Ray as suspected members of Al Qaeda. Diplomacy has thus far failed, and they can't even talk to a lawyer in order to clear their names.
Now, I agree in principle: if someone is a part of Al Qaeda, they should be locked up. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, they should be torn to pieces and thrown to the sharks. The tricky part is establishing who's actually in Al Qaeda and who isn't.
The thing about this that really stinks is that the Bush administration basically has carte blanche to lock up anyone they want, as an "enemy combatant." Who's to say they won't do this to particularly vocal political dissidents, such as antiwar or environmental activists, or militias?
Product placement (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think the unchanged nature of the logos can be chalked up to simple product placement. Firms like The Gap, Pepsi and Reebok paid a ton of money to get their logos into this movie, and they want to build brand-recognition in the here-and-now.
There's an interesting article [msn.com] over on Slate about the ads in Minority Report. Though product placement is nothing new, this film represents the first time corporations have actually hired outside advertising agencies to realize the full-length commercials that were played throughout the movie.
Re:Leftist Propaganda **SPOILERS** (Score:2, Interesting)
Anderton gets the halo, gets put in prison. Remember the gimp in the wheelchair? He said that while you're in the prison, you see all sorts of things including, and I somewhat-quote, "...even the world as it could have been."
Anderton never leaves prison. The tidy package that the movie creates is a construct of Anderton's mind. Lamar goes on to launch the pre-crime unit nationwide. The precogs don't move to a log cabin, Anderton doesn't get back with the missus, and there's no bun in the missus' oven, and if there is, it ain't Anderton's batter that caused it.
Re:Spielberg annoys to the end (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't understand why everybody thinks A.I. had a happy ending. At the end of the movie, humanity, repeatedly demonstrated to be arrogant and free of either compassion or a sense of responsibility, has burned itself into extinction. The only true compassion shown in the film is by the ur-robots, when they construct the reunion fantasy for David, and then quietly euthanize him.
The whole theme of the movie is spelled out in the prologue, when the theme question is raised. If we can build a machine that can love, what responsibility do we have to that machine? And the counterpoint: didn't God create Adam to love him? That's the ultimate conflict of the movie: compassion (of robots to one another) versus arrogance (of humans to one another and to robots).
From David's point of view, it looks like a tragic story with a happy ending. I guess I can understand how people can be confused; they must have ended up identifying with David, and adopting his point of view. But the true point of view of the film is the omniscient one, the point of view of the narrator, whose voice opens and closes the movie. From that point of view, it's a remorselessly dark, tragic story.
Obviously, it's one of my favorite movies of recent years.
Re:I went and was minority report a few days ago (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Product placement (Score:2, Interesting)
The scene that bothered me the most was when Anderton pulled up to his ex-wife's house, and got out of the Lexus. As he walks away from the car, the camera stays on the Lexus logo for a good 10 seconds or so. Here's why it bothered me so much: It seems like Steven Spielberg was taking directoral advice from the advertiser. We're not talking about some NYU film student here; Spielberg's been around the block, and here some advertiser is telling him how to shoot a scene. Steve, I never thought you'd sell out like this.
This cheap feel wouldn't have bothered me so if the movie wasn't otherwise good. But with a film that tries to make moral and societal observations, it's a shame to see it cheapened so.
Alternate Review - Comments Appreciated (Score:2, Interesting)
(And guys - if you're looking to improve the quality of submissions Slashdot gets, it would probably be a really good idea to allow a limited form of feedback for rejections - even if it was just a choice from a drop-down menu ("This story was rejected because we have a writer working on the same story right now", for example.)
Oh - and in response to one user's post - go see it, but with lowered expectations.
Review: Minority Report
Reviewers of Spielberg's latest film are falling over each other to laud his new, gritty noir vision of the future, "Minority Report", based on the Phillip K Dick short story of the same name. Roger Ebert [suntimes.com] loves it; the movie is currently standing at 93% at Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com], and Salon [salon.com] gives it a thumbs-up. But what's the reaction of your average geek?
(Full disclosure - while I am familiar with his work, I have not read the Phillip K. Dick story - so you're not going to read any comments about how the movie did or did not live up to the book. It stands and falls here on its own merits. Plot of the movie is discussed, but the ending is not given away. Plot of other Spielberg movies is also referenced.)
For those of you who have not yet been saturated by press releases or the trailer [apple.com] - Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, an investigator in the "pre-crime" police division of Washington D.C. in 2054. The department's work is facilitated by "pre-cogs", beings with the power to see the future - in particular, future murders. Alerted to crimes before they happen, the pre-crime unit can interpret the waking dreams of the pre-cogs and intercept the perpetrators before the event. This program has been such a success that murders in the D.C. area have been practically eliminated, and the government is considering taking the pre-crime unit national. Pre-cogs, it is claimed, are never wrong.
As a final safety check, federal investigator Danny Witwer (played by Colin Farrell) is sent to inspect the pre-crime facility. Anderson and his boss, Director Burgess (Max von Sydow) fear that the program is going to be taken away from them. However, things quickly get far more complex than mere power games over jurisdiction.
Another alert from the pre-cog pops up. This time, Anderson sees himself killing a man - a man he does not know. Convicted by the infallibility of his own system and convinced he has been set-up, Anderson runs, determined to escape his own destiny by finding out who framed him.
The Washington DC that he runs to is a computerized Paniopticon, biometric readers omnipresent and blithely accepted by the populace. However the street (to paraphrase William Gibson) always finds a means to subvert every technological innovation - and to continue to run, Cruise must sink into the underbelly of the world he knows and confront his own past.
As a geek, your acceptance of Minority Report's plot will depend a great deal upon your stance on temporal paradoxes. The effectiveness of the pre-crime unit rests in the belief that once the future is "seen" it must occur, and Anderton's unit is therefore justified in taking pre-emptive action. However, as Witwer points out, by intervening you have forestalled the event - is it therefore right to incarcerate someone who has not committed an offense? Determinism is assumed to be a fact, but it turns into a question central to the film.
Spielberg has received a lot of recent press [wired.com] claiming how much "darker" and dystopian this movie is than much of his early work. I've seen comments that extrapolate from "Saving Private Ryan" through "A.I." to this movie that suggest the man is on a trip that rivals Poe in bleakness. Suffice it to say that anyone who believes this has "E.T" burned into their minds but has forgotten "Empire of the Sun" [imdb.com] or even "The Color Purple" [imdb.com], films as equally as grim as "Minority Report".
In fact there comes a point about fifteen minutes before the end of the film where Spielberg could have wrapped it up, leaving every plot thread neatly tied, and delivered a much darker ending. However Hollywood, or his own essential optimism, has driven him to deliver a brighter alternative, much like "A.I." It is not a completely unsatisfactory conclusion - the climax involves a very nice moral conflict - but it is not the bleak outlook I expected from reading the pieces on Spielberg's new "dark vision".
Spielberg does not fail to hit upon themes that are central to his work - the breathtaking innocence of childhood; the loss of humanity and its possible redemption; and the two-edged sword of technology. (Spielberg is no starry-eyed technologist - the potential misuse of man's tools has been an ongoing thesis since "Duel" [imdb.com]. In "Minority Report" there is an interesting sub-theme of technology as a new religion, with Anderton, the tool user, set against Witwer, a traditionally trained Jesuit seminarian before he became a cop.
Spielberg's visualization of the near-future of 2054 is complete and compelling. Animated advertising crawls over every surface; enhanced personalization of every experience has come at the price of a sharp loss in privacy; the gap between the well-to-do and the drug-addled poor has grown massively. One wonders, however, if the appearance in the film of companies we have today is there for verisimilitude or is merely clever product placement - how many corporations do you expect to survive another 50 years with the same logo? And while the technology shown is (for the most part) very believable, it is ironic that the cause behind the pre-cogs ability is somewhat glossed over.
In his directing Spielberg has taken note of his younger, hungrier competitors, such as David Fincher [imdb.com].. Part of this change was to hire Alex McDowell (the production designer of "Fight Club" and "The Crow"). In addition, his camerawork, in cooperation with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (who worked with him on "Schindler's List") is more fluid than ever, using juxtaposition and video techniques to sometimes dazzling effect. And unlike his peer Lucas, who seems happy to place ultra-mirrored spacecraft in pristine environments and shiny robots on rich green grass, Spielberg's use of CGI is more subtle, "dirtier" and almost invisibly integrated in the scenes.
In terms of the cast, Tom Cruise is, well, Cruise. He's been chosen for roles for twenty years because he is an effective actor who is also cute, charming and bankable. His role as Anderton doesn't tax those abilities in any way. Max Von Sydow is the slightly scary Old Testament father figure he established himself in even before "The Exorcist". To me, the most effective player in the cast is Colin Farrell. Given a smaller role with far less screen time than Cruise he still succeeds in making his character deep, complex, and far more dynamic than the leading man's, with better lines and sharper delivery.
The plot is certainly enough to keep you guessing, with enough twists and turns to throw most. The movie has one "discovery" and an attendant chase scene that does stretch credibility somewhat, but otherwise the plotting is coherent and relatively bulletproof. There are holes, but none large enough to spoil the movie.
As a vision of the future, "Minority Report" is chock-full of ideas. As a movie, or even as a cyberpunk thriller, it leaves a little to be desired. After the film you won't want to tear your eyes out, but you may feel a sense of disappointment that Spielberg, who has demonstrated time and again that he can be deeply insightful into the human condition, warn of the dangers of technology while showcasing its attractions, and deliver a wild ride, could not quite succeed in delivering all three at once in this movie.
Re:I went and was minority report a few days ago (Score:2, Interesting)
Think of it as a time-travel conundrum. Technically, you can't know the future for the same reasons you can't change the past. Say you want to change, say, the shirt you wore Tuesday from blue to red, and you go back in time and convince yourself to change the shirt.
Now, you've changed your own past, which means you wore the red shirt. But if that's true, you had no motivation to go back in time in the first place. The paradox is that you when you change the past, you either remove the reason for or make impossible (think the "kill your grandfather" riddle) the doing of time-travel.
So, turn it around. If you can know the future and can change it, then pre-cog is invalid under many circumstances. If you can know the future and not change it, then trying to act on it will inevitably create self-fulfilling prophecies, predicated on knowing the outcome!
My wife hates time travel and refuses to talk with me about it.
Look and feel (Score:2, Interesting)
Why SF must be futurist? In most of Philip K. Dick stories the idea is more important than even the story. Perhaps here the message is that out society will not advance in the next 50 years.
The missing element (Score:3, Interesting)
However, he failed to achieve with "Minority Report" the same level of sympatico that Ridley Scott was able to achieve with "Blade Runner", or even what Paul Verhoeven was able to do with "Total Recall".
In other words, Speilberg may know where the edge is, now, but he's afraid to go to it and look over, for fear of falling.
THe absolute worst movie ever made would be a Spielberg version of a Clive Barker short story.
Gary Fleder ("Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead") is more likely than not to turn in a morbid showing on "Imposter", due to be released later this year.
"Imposter" will probably suck. REmember that you heard it here first. My reasoning is that all of the other good Phillip K. Dick adaptations have been short stories. It will likely be impossible to cover an entire book in just one movie.
Frankly, I wish Ridley Scott had done "Minortiy Report"; I guess he's too busy producing the likes of "Blackhawk Down" to direct, though.
Given my choice of everyone, I'd like to see John Carpenter direct a Phillip K. Dick based movie; he did such a good job with "The Thing" (an adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s -- former editor of Analog Magazine -- story), and "They Live", even though it was a comedy (written by Ray Nelson). He, like Kubrick, also has a good track record in science fiction (as opposed to Spielberg, who's science fantasy, through and through).
I don't mind Spielberg trying to stretch; but hiding in safety is not my idea of stretching, and if he can't bring himself to take the risk, he should stick with bringing us the next Indiana Jones installment, and if he wants to do science fantasy, then pick a science fantasy author whose stories are better suited to his talents. Now that Jack Clayton ("Something Wicked This Way Comes") is dead, maybe he could cover some of the other Ray Bradbury short stories? His talents would mesh well with many of the "The Autumn People" mileu, where you are supposed to be sympathetic to "the monsters".
-- Terry
this is so not PKD (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny you should make this joke (Score:3, Interesting)
I was eating dinner at a cafe last night and talking about the RIAA, the TCPA, the DMCA, and other four letter words. The music was too loud and everyone agreed that they would rather not have it. Someone joked that the RIAA would still make us find a way to pay for it. We laughed. Then someone pointed out that ASCAP and the RIAA do go to cafes and hit them up for royalties. So some of what we paid probably did go to the RIAA. And we had no choice in the matter.
At least I got to listen to it.
Re:Flying Cars... (Score:2, Interesting)