“Minority Report” Rated PG-13
****.5/*****
Despite the obvious difference of this film being set in 2054, it is very similar to an old-fashioned film noir from the ‘40s and ‘50s. Tom Cruise stars as Steven Speilberg’s Humphrey Bogart as the detective trying to solve a murder. It’s a whodunit, or as Speilberg calls it, a “who-will-do-it”. Cruise plays John Anderton, a well respected memeber of a team of cops, who are capable of stopping a murder before it is committed. Three “Precogs”, humans with prognative abilitys, float in a pool of liquid with their brains connected to wires. The images that they see when a murder will be comitted appear on a computer screen seconds later. In one of the most interesting scenes of the movie, Cruise manipulates the computer images with his hands on the screen while opera music plays.
The organization, Precrime, has been so succesfull that no murders have been committed in its 6 years of operation in D.C. Anderton believes the system is perfect until one day, the Precogs predict that he will be the next murderer. As Anderton comes from one close brush with capture to another, he trys to piece together the puzzle and find out who he thinks is setting him up.
Speilberg, as always, keeps the tension and excitment sky high, and keeps the audience rivited until the very end. His pacing and camera work are imbeckable. Cruise, Collen Farrell and Samantha Morton all turn in great performances, but the real star (besides Speilberg) here is the production design and special effects. Speilberg’s team of gifted experts bring us a unique and chilling, complete and detailed vision of the future by seamlessly blending CGI techniques with real actors and locations. Wheither your looking for sci-fi a good mystery story or just two hours of solid entertainment, Minority Report is the film for you.
