Retrospectacle: Minority Report

My first entry in this column was the Spielberg film A.I., a movie I utterly despised as a nine-year old child but grew to admire and ultimately like following recent subsequent viewings. The year following A.I. Spielberg unleashed the Tom Cruise sci-fi actioner Minority Report, a movie that a mild-mannered ten year-old kid walked into and absolutely loved. How does it hold up now? Very well.

Tom Cruise stars as John Anderton, the chief of police at the PreCrime Department. This police force uses three highly clairvoyant teenagers called “Precogs” to predict crimes and stop the perpetrators before they can commit it. The system is put to its greatest test when John Anderton himself is predicted to murder a man in thirty-six hours. Now on the run, John must find a way to beat the very system he was in charge of and try to answer the age-old question being whether we have free will or our lives are merely determined ahead of our actions and choices.

This movie does feature the philosophical debate of free-will and determinism, as emphasized in an early scene where Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell debate the two sides, but this is not a lecture. This movie is an action thrill ride filled with enough tension filled scenes and jaw-dropping special effects to entertain those who aren’t interested in the philosophical and social commentaries running throughout the movie. My favorite of which being a scene where John Anderton walks into a mall-like area and various advertisements are directed towards him personally through iris scanners situated throughout.

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s short story of the same name,  Minority Report truly reminds me of the Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle Total Recall. Both movies were based on source material from the famed science fiction writer but deviate from his story in many ways. Both movies suitably juxtapose their science fiction elements with more cerebral fare to elevate their position as “action movie” to another level. Minority Report takes itself far more serious than Total Recall, but both leave you with enough reasonable doubt as the credits roll that everything you have seen may not have happened as it appeared.

Minority Report is an excellent film, dare I say a perfect exercise of the action and science fiction genre.

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