Movie Review: Minority Report (2002)

Minority Report (2002): There's shedloads of films set in the future. In said future, we have it all. Wheels? Pah, stuff your stinking wheels. Who needs wheels, mate? We can fly! What? You actually have physical screens for your TVs and movies? Wake up, granddad, we have holograms to handle that shit. Oh yeah, and did I mention the shoes with the electronic laces? Yes indeed, this is a well-covered subject in film, which is why Minority Report doesn't stand out on paper, but in execution this is a fine mesh of Hollywood special effects and genuinely interesting storylines.

The year is THE FUTURE, 20somethingorother. I forget. Not that far in the future, no aliens yet (that we know of). The cops are really smart here because they can tell when someone's gonna commit a murder before they do it thanks to these three mutants who can see the future. Sitting in a swimming pool all day allows them to pool their thoughts together, because it would, wouldn't it. Relaxing and that. Tom Cruise is one of said policemen, until it turns out he's apparently gonna murder someone. He's not so happy about this (understandably), and a chase begins. The scientific stuff at the start is done fairly well, it sets the scene, establishes all the characters to the basic roles - Cruise is the good guy, Colin Farrell's the bad guy, Max von Sydow's Tom Cruise's mentor and confidante. It's easy to zone out when they get into the technicalities of it all with the bald people in the pools and that, mostly because the main one, Agatha, reminded me of the lead queen one from the Borg in the Patrick Stewart Star Trek stuff. However, when the chase kicks in the film becomes very entertaining as it builds to the supposed murder. The film has a twist that makes you rethink the way you've previously perceived major characters and one scene in particular really caught me by surprise.

The ending of the film is the only really contentious thing, as it is more conventionally happy than you may think, in contrast with the rest of the film which is all rather dark, the film being drab in appearance and rather bleak and dystopian overall. The film focuses a lot on determinism, whether we can change our future or whether it's all mapped out for us, and combines this with a look at the extreme "police state" seen in the film, where an overly-authoritative regime completely eradicates murders but also seems to reduce the overall quality of life for the citizens that are being protected. There's also the idea of the precogs, the mutants who predict the murders, not being allowed a decent quality of life, essentially being kept as slaves. These threads are all mostly tied up nicely at the end, although these ending in a more dramatic "negative" manner would surely have made them more memorable because the positive note it ends on mostly leaves the viewer empty in what was an otherwise very interesting film. Two thumbs up.