Minority Reportweblog| writing| reviews| flickr| Mothcast |
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Hold on a minute. Spielberg only released AI last year. What gives? Is he the sf Woody Allen? How the fuck do you produce two big-budget effects movies one year after the other, with totally different design aesthetics and cast and... I mean, this isn't like filming two Lord of the Rings movies back to back. So, given that it must have been produced nearly simultaneously with AI, does Minority Report have its own voice, is it a unique entry in the Spielberg canon? Fuck, yeah. In a recognisable yet stylised future world based on the writings of Philip K Dick, you'd expect this to have tropes of Blade Runner, and there they are. Spinners. The omni-present animated billboards. The new world sitting on top of the old. Crammed cities. But this is Blade Runner in the sun, bleached out and not yet a bruised dystopia. This world is almost utopian. Murder is a thing of the past thanks to the psychic detectives of the recently-created Department of Precrime. Precrime's enforcers are headed by Tom Cruise's John Anderton, his single-minded devotion to the prevention of murder fuelled by the loss of his son shortly before the formation of the department. He works harder than anybody to keep DC's families safe from the kind of trauma he suffered. However, in an entirely expected turn of events, his faith in the pre-cognitive cops' abilities is tested when he finds himself named as the next killer they have to stop. What follows is his desperate flight to prove his innocence against the inexorable workings of fate. So, that's the plot out of the way, or the bit of the plot you would feel comfortable knowing. The important thing now is whether it's any good. And, what do you know, it is. Spielberg, you can't help but feel, needed to make an action movie. A proper one, a blockbuster. Perhaps he got bored of waiting for George Lucas to get round to working out what was going to happen in Indy IV. Perhaps he was weary of seriousness. For no-one can accuse Minority Report of being po-faced. There is a wicked streak of humour running through this movie, most memorably some near-slapstick with a pair of eyeballs (Seriously. A pair of eyeballs. Human ones. Just thank God they stop short of actual juggling). When you have the kind of budget Dreamworks and Fox can throw at a high-profile picture like this, effects are no longer the raison d'etre of the movie. This means the story can get back to what we're actually interested in - people. Yes, the effects are great, but they're there as plot devices, not as plot filler. The mechanical spiders which infest an apartment block at one point - a bravura, De Palma-esque sequence with the camera actually in the ceiling - are there to heighten tension, not simply for the audience to gawp at. The Abyss's water tentacle they are not. Of course, with this being the case, the human story had better be a good one, hadn't it? And it is. As you'd expect with Philip K Dick, the story hinges on ideas of identity and predestiny. What if you knew - knew with absolute certainty - that you were going to kill a man, yet you know in your heart that you simply are not a killer? Does knowing your fate seal it? Cruise gives us a good show as a dead-inside workaholic (and - gasp! - a drug addict! Mister Cruise! Shame on you!) who discovers that all he's been working for could be wrong. Chasing him are his former mates in the department, which leads to some well-played tension and even a little humour - the scene in which they attempt to take him in while chatting casually about the futility of trying to escape keeps the ensuing chase light and digestible. Unlike the "sick-sticks", let's hope they never become standard issue. Also on his tail is ambitious FBI agent Witwer, a strong performance which should see Colin Farrell's bankability rise in the near future. God, sorry, even I'm bored of this review now. Bye. |
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