Minority Report

Year: 2002
Running time: 145 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Scott Frank, Jon Cohen
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, Steve Harris, Neal McDonough, Daniel London, Lois Smith, Tim Blake Nelson, Peter Stormare, Mike Binder, Arye Gross, Ashley Crow

Along with A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report kicked off Steven Spielberg's later career. Watching any of these three, but this one in particular, you get the feeling that, having proved himself one of the masters of cinema alongside Kurosawa, Coppola and Scorsese (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) and also a master of popcorn event cinema up there with Cameron, Lucas and Jackson (Jaws, Indiana Jones), he's now having a little more fun, legacy forever secured. As a result, Minority Report feels fresh even though Spielberg is no stranger to science fiction, blending the cinematic maestro Spielberg with the blockbusting crowd-pleaser version.

Anderton at work.

Thanks to the psychic gifts of three precognitive humans ('precogs'), led by Agatha (Samantha Morton), who have the ability to foresee murder, John Anderton (Tom Cruise) heads up Washington D.C.'s precrime division, arresting people for murder before the murder has actually taken place. The success of precrime is obvious, with the state being murder-free since the division was established. Pre-determined murder is non-existent, with only sudden 'crimes of passion' giving Anderton and co any work to do.

In a bravura early set-piece the workings of precrime are established; the pre-cogs 'see' the murder and these visions are projected onto a screen from their minds and captured for the precrime team to work with. The names of the perpetrator and victim are also given. Using innovative touch-screen tech that looked futuristic back in 2002, but certainly not too far outside the realms of possibility nowadays, Anderton searches through the images for clues as to the means, method and location of the murder. Once they find enough clues to establish what's going to happen and where, they rush to the scene to arrest the person before they commit the crime, for 'future murder'.

Emboldened by the success, director of precrime Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) is pushing to extend the division beyond Washington D.C., taking it 'national'. This has triggered an investigation into the suitability of precrime by the Justice Department, headed by Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell). There is plenty of scope for moral complexity with this set up (the film is inspired, as so much great science fiction is, by a story by Philip K. Dick), and that's before we even fill in some of Anderton's back story.

Anderton is a grieving father, his young son abducted from a busy public swimming pool leading to the collapse of his marriage and Anderton becoming dependent on drugs to get through the day, while at night he re-watches home videos of his wife and son over and over. When Witwer agrees the system works perfectly and the flaw is human, this is precisely what he means.

Two things happen to bring Anderton's world crashing down around him; firstly, Witwer discovers his drug habit, but secondly, and more crucially, the latest murder seen by the precogs shows Anderton himself murdering a man named Leo Crow (Mike Binder). Anderton has no choice but to run ("Everybody runs", goes the repeated refrain) and find a way prove his innocence in the light of the damning evidence that has been used by the precrime team to catch and convict so many others.

On the run for a murder he's not (yet) committed.

Minority Report is a blend of sci-fi actioner and noir thriller, as slowly Anderton and Witwer uncover a conspiracy involving the fallibility of the precogs' visions and murder to silence a grieving mother. It's wonderful stuff; Spielberg blends the two styles beautifully, investing in character, story and weaving the mystery around the astoundingly-staged action, the visuals, while incredible, always in service to the story and plot, building the future D.C. around the events onscreen.

Music and camerawork complement each other perfectly, particularly around a nail biting sequence involving little robotic spiders scanning eyes to ID everyone in a building, the camera moving over the top of the action in a scene that feels downright European in it's construction, in spite of the American-ness of everything else. One of the best things Spielberg ever did was team up with the extraordinary cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, and the blue-tinged, slightly washed-out look of the future of Minority Report is incredibly effective, giving the film a look that is unique to it.

The bravura set pieces and extraordinary look of the film sit alongside a Maltese Falcon-type layered, noir-ish story that is faultlessly executed and satisfyingly told.

Score: 8/10

I had assumed I'd overrated Minority Report when looking at other reviews (I sometimes seem to score Spielberg higher than others), but it seems I'm right on the money when considering these reviews from Roger Ebert and Kirk at The Hollywood Reporter.