December of 2011 was a great time to be a Steven Spielberg fan as he had two films release within four days of one another. The first of these two, The Adventures of Tintin, is a rousing adventure film he collaborated on with Peter Jackson as well as his first animated film.
Tintin (played by Jamie Bell) is a young reporter with a thirst for adventure. He gets more than he bargained for when he buys a model of a triple masted shipping vessel named the Unicorn. He is given an offer to buy it from a shady fellow named Sakharine (played by Daniel Craig), but refuses and takes it home, his faithful dog Snowy by his side. Curious about the interest in the ship, he begins researching the history of the ship and upon examining it further discovers a hidden scroll within the ship that gives a clue to the resting spot of the treasure the sunken vessel contained. He is subsequently kidnapped by Sakharine's goons, who want the scroll for themselves as it is one of three total that hold the answer to the location of the lost treasure. Taken aboard a ship, Tintin is able to escape his captors and crosses paths with Captain Archibald Haddock (played by Andy Serkis), who is a direct descendant of the Captain of the Unicorn. The two decide to team up to retrieve the last remaining scroll and beat Sakharine and his goons to the treasure.
Steven Spielberg was first introduced to the classic Tintin comics when he was in Paris promoting Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was reading a review in a French newspaper that kept referring to Tintin but didn't understand what that meant. He was then introduced to the Tintin books and was immediately taken by the artwork and stories contained within. He immediately wanted to make a film out of them. Meanwhile, the author and artist behind the original Tintin books, Herge, felt that Steven Spielberg was the only director that could do Tintin justice. Spielberg would revisit the material several time over the years but struggled to find a way to bring it to the big screen in a way that he felt still honored the artistry of the original books. Revisiting it shortly after the latest Indiana Jones film, Spielberg reached out to Peter Jackson's effects company, Weta, to see if they would be able to create a convincing CGI Snowy, since he knew he'd never get the performance he needed from a real dog. A few months later, a test reel arrived that not only had a convincing CGI Snowy, but also featured Peter Jackson himself dressed as Captain Haddock. Overjoyed, Spielberg suggested the two should collaborate on the film as Jackson was a lifelong Tintin fan himself. As they discussed the film, they decided to do the film using the performance capture animation style that would offer the sort of uncanny live action feel while also preserving the artwork style that Herge created. In fact, there is a cameo of sorts for Herge as in the beginning of the film when Tintin is having a portrait done and the artist doing the portrait is made up to look like Herge (who had sadly passed away by this point). Furthermore, in a cute moment, the portrait is of the comic version of Tintin.
Spielberg took to the new filming format quite well, manning the camera himself for much of the motion capture process and enjoying the freedom it allowed. He is able to pull off camera moves and angles that would have been difficult if not impossible to pull off in live action. This is certainly one of his more active films in terms of camera movement and the results are quite stunning. No where is this more evident than in a chase scene between Tintin and Haddock and Sakharine and his goons as they try to get the three scrolls from one another. The entire chase is done in one shot as the camera follows each person as they get the scrolls from the other while chaos reigns around them. It's a fantastically executed sequence that would have been impossible to pull off in live action. Then on top of that, the animation in it's finished state is nothing short of jaw dropping for the level of detail the attained. They even took the time to animate lens flares where they would occur if the film was shot live action.
The cast assembled for the film is fantastic. Jamie Bell plays Tintin impeccably, perfectly bringing to life the character's love for mystery and adventure as well as his genuinely inquisitive nature. Andy Serkis is great as Captain Haddock, who is some ways is similar to Tintin in his love for adventure, but also has a love of drinking that the more straight laced Tintin does not approve of. Serkis is clearly having a ball playing the colorful character and that joy is infectious. Daniel Craig is similarly having fun with the dastardly Sakharine, who is determined to obtain that treasure for himself for his own mysterious reasons and is prepared to kill anyone who gets in his way, including Tintin and Haddock. In a supporting role are Nick Frost and Simon Pegg as police officers Thomson and Thompson, who despite looking nearly identical are not in fact related. Frost and Pegg are having a ball bringing the two inept and clumsy detectives to life and their longtime friendship plays well into their character's bantering and bumbling.
One of the more disheartening film going experiences occurred when I went to see this film on opening night on December 21st, 2011 and discovered I had the theatre entirely to myself. Under other circumstances, this might be seen as good news but for the opening night of a new Spielberg movie, I found it rather saddening. Still, I enjoyed the hell out of the movie and didn't let it bother me too much, but I still wanted it to do better than it did. It certainly did better in the foreign markets that were more familiar with the original Herge albums. I loved the film from beginning to end myself and it was immediately one of my favorite Spielberg films from then on. It's gone on to be discovered by audiences in U.S in the years since. It was recently announced that the long promised second film, this time directed by Peter Jackson, is still happening and should be out in the next 2-3 years. I, for one, can't wait.
While Munich may have been Steven Spielberg's most controversial film from a political perspective, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull kicked up a surprising amount of controversy among the fans of the series, with some hating the film so much they claimed it had, "raped their childhood." Does the film deserve such extreme hatred? I personally don't think so and I consider myself as big an Indiana Jones fan as anyone.
The film announces it's now jumped ahead time periods to 1957 with a fun blast of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" as we center on a group of hot rod driving teenagers coming across a military convoy. After a quick race between the hot rod and the lead Military vehicle, the convoy turns off to a secluded Military base in the middle of the Nevada desert. It turns out the convoy is a group of covert Soviet operatives led by Irinia Spalko (played by Cate Blanchett). Stashed into the trunk of one of the cars, she has Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford), along with his pal Mac (played by Ray Winstone). She needs Indy's help in locating a specific crate in a large warehouse on the base (that should look very familiar to fans of the series). The crate they are looking for contains very specific remains from a crash site in New Mexico in the late 1940s that Indy helped examine. Begrudgingly, Indy helps them find the crate but makes his escape to a nuclear bomb test site. After narrowly avoiding being vaporized, Indy is able to get back to civilization only to find himself accused of being a communist and finds his teaching job in peril. He is found by a young man, Mutt Williams (played by Shia Lebeouf), who says he was sent to find him by his mother and a Dr. Harold Oxley (played by John Hurt), a former colleague of Indiana's. In the letter Mutt gives to Indy, it includes a coded message from Oxley revealing the first clue to the recovery of a Crystal Skull located in the jungles of South America, the item that the Soviets were looking for. This begins a new adventure for Indiana Jones and his new sidekick that will take him all the way to an ancient lost city and face to face with former flame Marion Ravenwood (played by Karen Allen).
A fourth Indiana Jones film had been rumored off an on starting in the early nineties but kept getting put off until a suitable script could be found. George Lucas came up with the idea of the object everyone is after being the mysterious Crystal Skulls. The thought process behind this was that much like the original three films were an homage to the 30's adventure serials, with the time jump to the 1950's, the new entry should reflect the B-movies of that era. Multiple screenplays were commissioned over the years with mixed success. David Koepp ultimately combined ideas from the various scripts by the likes of Jeph Stewart, Frank Darabont and Jeff Nathanson that worked the best to craft the final shooting script. The film kicks this off with an homage to George Lucas' love of street racing and hot rod cars in his youth, complete with the driver decked out in Lucas's trademark button down flannel shirt and a sequence that echoes the boy scouts opening of the previous film that was an homage to Spielberg's time in the Scouts. From there, the film builds a pretty straight-forward Indiana Jones film with the same big, ridiculous action sequences we've seen before, including a car chase in the warehouse with a fun Easter Egg for the fans, to a fun chase through the campus of Indy's college campus and all the other sorts of shenanigans I have always loved about these movies. The film does a decent job of recapturing the spirit of the original three films for the most part. There is something that is a bit off about this one and I think that really comes down the the distance between this film and the one prior. Spielberg had grown and matured as a filmmaker between the two films and his style had evolved with it. So, naturally this one was going to feel different no matter how hard they tried to recapture the spirit of the first three films. The biggest thing that developed between the previous film and this one was CGI, which this film uses far more of that it should have. It's not even great CGI at that, which makes it really distracting.
I will admit that the movie has some flaws to it that perhaps caused some people to be disappointed, but I still don't see anything that merits the furor the film received over the past ten years. The performances are good, with Harrison Ford slipping back effortlessly into the role of Indiana Jones. Karen Allen is a joy to have back as my favorite of Indy's girls (even if the other two weren't a screeching nightmare and the other was, well, dead). Cate Blanchett made an intriguing and unique villain. There is still a lot to enjoy with the movie. I didn't even mind the inclusion of the Alien, er, Inter-dimensional beings plotline. Yes, the action sequences were over the top but then again they always were in this series! Why does Indy, Willie and Short Round jumping out of a plane in an inflating yellow dinghy get a pass but something just a ridiculous as surviving a nuclear explosion in a refrigerator get treated like it's the destruction of all that's holy? So much so that it coins a term that points to the moment when a film series gets too ridiculous for it's own good? Now, that's not to say there are not cringeworthy moments in the film and unfortunately they both center on Shia LaBeouf's Mutt Williams. Did we really need to see Mutt swinging through the jungle on vines like Tarzan? No, we did not. Nor did we need the sequence of him straddling between two racing jeeps while getting repeatedly hit in the crotch with local plant life. But, aside from that I don't see anything worthy of such intense hatred, surely nothing that that deserved the use of a phrase such as "raped my childhood." Good god, people, lighten up.
I still remember when this film came out on Memorial Day weekend in 2008. I actually took that Friday off and went to go see it at the theater in Lakeville, MN on the MonsterScreen they have down there as it is one of the biggest screens in the state. I genuinely enjoyed the film. Yes, there were things I could nitpick over and what not. But at the same time, when they pulled Indy out of that trunk again at the beginning of the film and he put the fedora in again for the first time in 19 years as that familiar John Williams theme came up, I couldn't help but tear up a little. So, that has to mean something. Or maybe I just prefer to focus on the abundance of positives rather than focus on the few negatives.
Easily the most controversial film in Steven Spielberg's career was Munich, about the 1972 kidnapping and murder of several Israeli Olympic Athletes and the subsequent covert retaliation towards those responsible. Spielberg's film of those events is a provocative and intense film that will leave the viewer with plenty to ponder at the end.
During the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, 11 Israeli athletes are kidnapped and subsequently murdered by members of a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. Avner Kaufman (played by Eric Bana), a Mossad agent of German-Jewish descent, is chosen to lead a mission to assassinate the 11 Palestinian people believed to be responsible for the massacre. At the direction of his handler Ephraim (played by Geoffrey Rush), Avner resigns from the Mossad and agrees to operate with no official ties to Israel as to provide the Israeli government plausible deniability. He assembles a team that includes four other Jewish men from around the world, South African driver Steve (played by Daniel Craig), Belgian explosives expert Robert (played by Mathieu Kassovitz), former Israeli soldier Carl (played by Ciaran Hinds) and Danish documents forger Hans (played by Hanns Zischler). With information from a French informant named Louis (played by Mathieu Amalric), they begin to hunt down the men responsible for the Munich massacre and take them out one by one.
Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner knew they were courting controversy when they decided to make this film, but rather than shy away from it, they leaned into it. The film does not romanticize or glorify what the Mossad agents did in response to the Munich massacre. It's played very realistically both in terms of it's violence, which is explicit and shocking, but also the psychological toll these operations take on the team. They're not afraid to show their characters having doubts about what they're doing and if it's even accomplishing what they want to accomplish. Spielberg keeps the film very grounded and well within the confines of realism. The film is considered fictional, but they operate within the confines of what probably happened. It's a bold way to make the film and makes it all the more impactful for it. They really take the time to examine the nature of revenge and does it really solve anything or does violence just beget more violence? Especially when it only seems to be making the situation worse? Spielberg and Kushner wisely don't provide any easy answers and rather leave it up to the viewer to ruminate on their own.
The performances in the film are excellent, starting with Eric Bana in the lead role. He does a great job portraying his character and the impact that his missions over the course come to have on him as he grows more and more demoralized as things carry on. Mathieu Kassovitz is great as the explosives expert Robert, who grows weary as well with what they are doing, as well as with the fact that he has been hired to build the bombs they use to take out their targets when his job prior was to dismantle them. Cirian Hinds has a nice turn as well as the oldest member of the group and becomes a good mentor of sorts for Bana's character. Of course, it's always nice seeing Geoffrey Rush in a movie and he's compelling as the group's covert resource in the Israeli government.
Munich stirred up a lot of controversy when it was released, with several people denouncing the film as anti-Israeli, which shows they completely missed the point of the film. The film goes out of it's way not to glamorize the events it tells and yet at the same time is not entirely denouncing them either. But rather examining the outcome of a response to something like what happened in Munich. How one has to take the time to step back and with a level head plan out the response and ensure that it isn't in fact going to just make things worse. The fact that the film takes the time to really explore the impact of the Mossad agent's retaliation and the effect it had on those agents is what makes this film that much more meaningful.
If Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T were the dream of what the meeting of humanity and beings from another planet could be, then War of the Worlds is the nightmare. Using the classic H.G Wells novel as a guide, Steven Spielberg updates the alien invasion classic with a haunting modern twist.
Ray Ferrier (played by Tom Cruise) spends his days working on the docks in Brooklyn and working on his cars at home. He is being left in charge of his two kids, Rachel (played by Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (played by Justin Chatwin) while their mother and stepfather go to Boston for the weekend. The weekend does not start off well as they kids are less than thrilled to have to spend the weekend with their father, who they are at least somewhat estranged from. The visit takes a surprising turn when an unusual storm blows in with lighting strikes hitting the same spots repeatedly. The same lightning wipes out all electronics and vehicles. Ray investigates the lightning strikes with a few of his neighbors when the ground underneath them begins to shake and move until a large, alien machine rises from deep within the ground, standing high above the buildings on three long legs. The machine, dubbed a tripod, starts laying waste to the crowd blasting people and buildings with high powered beams that literally turn them to ash. Ray is able to dodge the repeated beams and make it back to his house. He gathers his kids and steals the one car he knows will still work since he told the mechanic working on it to switch out the solenoid, which got fried by the EMP that was in the lighting set off by the aliens. Ray, Robbie and Rachel then hit the road, trying to avoid crowds and find safety as the world is taken over and being systematically destroyed by the strange alien invaders.
Steven Spielberg, along with screenwriters Josh Friedman and David Koepp, does a great job bringing the horrors of H.G Wells' classic novel to the big screen while also updating it to the modern age. By keeping the story focused primarily on three characters for the majority of the film, it really adds to the tension of the film as the viewer is more or less right there alongside them for the entire film. The special effects for the film are top notch and frighteningly convincing. The design of the Tripod ships are straight out of the original novel and feel genuinely menacing, especially with this horrifying blaring horn noise that erupts from them each time they show up. For the majority of the film, they had me on the edge of my seat as Ray, Robbie and Rachel go from one intense moment to another Spielberg does come up with some genuine nightmare scenarios from the initial fleeing from the Tripods as the the landscape behind them is completely destroyed to a disastrous attempt to escape by ferry to the aftermath of the initial attacks. For a film about an alien invasion, the film feels grounded in reality as the events that unfold that made the fear and terror the characters were feeling palpable to me and therefore more effective as the film went on and their situation got more and more dire. That is, right up until the very ending when there is a revelation of a particular character that had me calling bullshit as I watched Spielberg give in to his need for a completely happy ending. If you've seen the film, you know what I'm talking about. Aside from that last minute moment, the film is a superior Sci-Fi Thriller.
The acting in the film is solid throughout. Tom Cruise does a good job as Ray, a father who is doing his best to try and keep it together for his kids and keep them safe, but at the same time is scared out of his mind. Cruise does a good job portraying that and felt very much like how a parent would be in such a dire situation. Dakota Fanning likewise was really good as Rachel, even though she basically just had to act terrified for much of the film, she was at least convincingly terrified. Justin Chatwin does the best he can with what is probably the most underwritten role in the movie. For about the first half, Robbie is stepping up and helping his dad with Rachel and keeping her calm but then about the halfway point, his character is all ready to abandon his father and sister to run off with the troops and fight the aliens. It's such a sudden character shift and the movie never quite satisfactorily explains the sudden and decidedly selfish change in character, especially since he's just a teenager and it's clear his dad is relying on him to help with Rachel. Tim Robbins turns up in the second half of the film and has a good turn as a shell-shocked and mentally unstable farmer the Ferriers take shelter with at one point who slowly goes from savior to liability that Ray has to figure out how to deal with.
Still, despite it's flaws, there is a lot to like about War of the Worlds. It maintains a level of intensity that is alone impressive as it moves from one crisis to another at a brisk pace, with the film clocking in at just under two hours. It is a film I enjoyed when I saw it in the theater back in 2005 and still enjoy today, despite the nitpicks mentioned above. I feel it's merits outweigh it's flaws.
Following up Catch Me If You Can, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks re-teamed with the charming fish out of water comedy The Terminal. With a unique premise and a diverse cast of characters, this made for an amusing, if at times sentimental, film.
Viktor Navorski (played by Tom Hanks) is visiting America from the small Eastern European nation of Krakozhia. Unfortunately, when he lands he discovers that a Military Coup occurred in his home country and is no longer recognized as a nation by the United States Government. He is also unable to return to his home country under his current passport. Therefore, he must remain in the airport until the issues with his home country are resolved. Initially distraught at his predictament, Viktor begins to learn to adapt to his current situation. He finds a place to sleep in a section of the airport that is currently under construction, fashioning a bed out of a couple rows of seats. He figures out how to make enough money to eat, as his Krakozhia money is no longer any good. He starts learning English. And he starts making friends with some of the airport employees, including flight attendant Amelia Warren (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones), with whom a potential romance begins to blossom. Meanwhile, Frank Dixon (played by Stanley Tucci), is up for promotion to director of Customs for the airport and becomes increasingly obsessed with getting Navorski to leave the airport and in the process become someone else's problem.
When it came to producing The Terminal, there was one big problem in their way. No airport in the world was going to allow a big Hollywood film to film in their airport. So, they built their own. Since there was no sound stage big enough to build the massive set required, they, appropriately enough, constructed it within the confines of an old airplane hanger. It the process it became one of the biggest sets ever constructed for a film, filling the entire hanger with real, operational stores and restaurants just like one would find in an actual airport. Spielberg and Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski then proceeded to shoot it with some geuninely great cinematography that beautifully compliments the warm and funny story they're telling.
Tom Hanks turns in a delightful performance as Viktor, adopting a flawless Eastern European accent (based on his father-in-law, who is from Bulgaria) and gives the character a nice sense of warmth and compassion. Viktor starts off the film very much lost and confused, only speaking broken English and frightened because he's trapped in a foreign country on his own and can't leave. As the film goes on, Viktor starts to adapt to his situation and starts making friends with people who work at the airport and throughout it Viktor starts to grow and become more comfortable and also open up. Catherine Zeta-Jones makes for an interesting romantic prospect for Viktor as the two bond over their repeated meetings as she flies in and out of the airport as a Flight Attendant. She sees the potential for a better match in Viktor than in some prior boyfriends she's had. Diego Luna gives a nice performance in the film as a food service worker in the airport, Enrique Cruz, who makes a deal with Viktor that Enrique will keep him fed if he will help Enrique find out more about a Customs officer he has a crush on, Dolores Torres (played by Zoe Saldana) that Viktor visits every day in hopes he'll get the okay to leave the airport. Zoe Saldana is equally charming in her role as well, as in addition to being a Customs officer, she's a huge Star Trek fan who regularly cosplays at conventions. Of course, this plot point is more amusing now as Saldana subsequent to being in this film was cast as Uhura in the recent Star Trek films. Kumar Pallana has an amusing supporting role as an airport custodian Gupta Rajan, who takes great delight in watching people ignore the wet floor signs he puts down when he mops and slip and slide on the wet floors.
The Terminal is probably not one of Spielberg's best films, but it is one of his sweetest and most charming films he's made. It features a great performance from Tom Hanks and a diverse cast of colorful characters to surround him an a genuinely funny and heartwarming film. It's one that I certainly have a lot of affection for and enjoy revisiting from time to time.
After the darker and more serious futuristic Sci-Fi films A.I: Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report, Spielberg made a shift towards something lighter and more fun with the delightful romp, Catch Me If You Can.
Frank Abagnale, Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is an American teenager, living with his mother and father in suburban America. Everything falls apart when his father, Frank Sr. (played by Christopher Walken) loses most of their money when he gets in trouble with the IRS and they have to move from their spacious house to a two bedroom apartment. His father tries to make everything okay, but the marriage suffers and the two ultimately divorce. Unable to deal with the situation, Frank runs away to New York City. In order to stay in the city, he starts passing fraudulent checks from a checking account his father opened for him. When he learns that banks are willing to cash larger payroll checks, he starts creating fraudulent payroll checks, starting with Pan Am Airlines. He even goes so far as to getting a Pilot uniform to further sell the con. It works like a charm and he's able to pass check after check. This catches the attention of FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (played by Tom Hanks) who begins to pursue Frank across the country as Frank jumps from New York to Florida to Louisiana and successfully passes himself off as not only a pilot but also a Pediatrician and a prosecuting Attorney.
Steven Spielberg directed the film from a script by Jeff Nathanson that was inspired by the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. I say inspired because the film does take some liberties with the true story, especially the playful relationship between Frank and Carl throughout the film (also Carl is a fictional amalgamation of several FBI agents that pursued Frank). It probably doesn't make too much logical sense for a wanted criminal to call the F.B.I to chat with the person investigating you, especially at the same time every year (Frank calls Carl every Christmas). Still, it adds to the narrative of the film and builds the relationship between the two that would ultimately pay off in unexpected ways by the end of the film. The film has some gorgeous cinematography throughout. It really feels like, after making three desaturated, grimy and gritty films, Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski looked at each other and decided to just make the prettiest, most colorful movie they possibly could. It really lends itself to the overall lighter and more comedic tone of the film and works nicely. To top it off, John Williams provides a fun and jazzy score that helps the film maintain it's comedic tone through much of it's run time. The film kicks off with a fun Saul Bass inspired title sequence that would go on to become so iconic that The Simpsons memorably spoofed it in a season 15 episode, fittingly titled "Catch 'Em If You Can."
The acting in the film is excellent, beginning with Leonardo DiCaprio whom much of the success of the film hinges on. He does a great job portraying his quick intellect and able to improvise in any situation, such as a scene early in the film when he is attending a local public school for the first time and runs foul of a couple bullies. When he's mistaken for a substitute teacher, given that he's wearing a coat and tie, he decides to roll with it in part to show up the bullies that harassed him. He also shows the growing confidence Frank attains as he pulls off his cons and they grow more complex and sophisticated. As he grows more confident, he really turns on the charm to help his cons work and DiCaprio delivers that with ease. Tom Hanks plays the opposite side of that coin with Carl Hanratty as a super serious and driven FBI Agent, although he's not completely humorless as at a couple of points he tells a mean knock knock joke. Still, Hanks does a great job portraying not only Hanratty's drive but also his increasing frustration at being beaten by Frank. The film also features a number of early appearances by future stars such as Ellen Pompeo, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams. The film also features, perhaps to only my own amusement, a former classmate of mine through fifth grade, Jeremy Howard. He plays the waiter that clues Carl Hanratty into the fact that an alias Frank was using, Barry Allen, is the alter ego of the comic book character The Flash. I always find it amusing when he pops up in things here and there.
Catch Me If You Can remains one of my favorite Spielberg films. It's a lighter and funnier film than most of his films. It is also one of his most easily rewatchable movies in his filmography with charming turns by both lead actors, a fun score by John Williams and a nice pace to it. It's a movie that never fails to put a smile on my face.
Following A.I: Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg returned with another bold vision of the future, a future where violent crimes are preventable. With spectacular action sequences and a compelling plot, this film is an interesting mix of high concept science fiction and murder mystery.
John Anderton is a detective with the Pre-Crime unit based in 2054 Washington D.C., a specialized unit that works to prevent violent crimes before they occur, with the help of Pre-Cogs, short for Pre-Cognitive, three extremely psychic people, Agatha (played by Samantha Morton), Arthur (played by Michael Dickman) and Dashiell (played by Matthew Dickman), whose visions of violent crimes are able to be captured and relayed to the detectives in their unit, along with an exact time they are to occur, to examine and determine the location and subjects. They are then dispatched to the location before it's due to occur and successfully stop the murder from occurring. Their unit is a test unit for the city and has been so successful, the National Government is preparing to roll it out nationwide. Auditing the system is Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer (played by Colin Farrell) and has some concerns over the legality of it all. It is at this point that a new prediction comes in from the Pre-Cogs, this one featuring Anderton himself killing another man in 36 hours. Shocked, Anderton makes a run for it, trying to figure out what the prediction means and how it can be showing him murdering someone he's never met in 36 hours. Agent Danny Witwer and Anderton's fellow detectives follow in hot pursuit as the director of the Pre-Crime unit, Lamar Burgess (played by Max Von Sydow) watches over the case.
At it's core, this film is just a really intriguing and exhilarating adventure story, with the science fiction elements providing a little more meat to the story than the usual wanted man on the run tale. The film has an intriguing premise that is also a paradox. If you stop a person from committing a murder, are they still guilty of that crime? It's addressed in the film as basically if Pre-Crime had not intervened the crime would have certainly occurred as predicted, so in their viewpoint the answer is a definite yes. But yet, there was enough doubt there to keep my intellectual wheels turning. The film also tackles the idea of free will vs. predestination. If you know the future can you walk away or will events conspire to come together to bring about the inevitable no matter what you do? It's something that Spielberg and screenwriters Scott Frank and Jon Cohen do a great job of exploring. Spielberg also took his time to try and develop a viable vision for the future. It's the smaller details that seem the most plausible, like the updating newspapers and moving images on cereal boxes were a unique idea. I found it amusing that cell phones had gotten so small that it was just a small earpiece. Also, the personalized advertisements where people walk by billboards they change to customize to the people walking by them. That's definitely going to be a thing, considering that already here in the present every time I go on the Williams-Sonoma website and don't buy something I get an email from them asking if I found what I was looking for along with products I might be interested in. So, that's definitely going to be a thing. As for the self-driving cars featured throughout, I'm not so sure about that one considering Uber's recent attempt with that resulted in a fatality.
Tom Cruise marks his first collaboration with Spielberg in this film and does quite well in the role of John Anderton, who beneath the veneer of Pre-Crime detective is a man who is broken up over the disappearance of his son and subsequently devoted his life to the Pre-Crime system to try and prevent that same horror from happening to anyone else, even at the cost of his marriage. Samantha Morton is great as the Pre-Cog Agatha, who has spent the majority of her life in the seclusion of a room in the Pre-Crime building with the two other Pre-Cogs that acts as a sensory deprivation room of sorts, which apparently amplifies her abilities. Later in the film she teams up with Anderton to help him and escapes into the world for the first time in a long time and the way she is tuned into the future and what is going to happen. As they make their way through a shopping mall to avoid pursuing police officers, she tells him what to do as they go through the mall how to escape detection by the officers, including stopping a specific spot so they will be blocked by a by-passing balloon salesman when the cops arrive. Then, in the middle of it, she grabs a passerby and just says, "He knows, don't go home." It just shows how tuned in she is into everyone's potential future and Morton plays the role beautifully.
Minority Report is another great Spielberg film and despite clocking in at 140 minutes moves at a strong pace from one thrilling moment to another while throwing a few decent plot twists into the mix as well to keep things interesting. It's one I've always really enjoyed but then again I love stories like this, about fate, predestination and whether or not the future can be changed. It tackles some interesting science fiction themes on top of it's dazzling action sequences to leave the audience pondering far after the credits have rolled.
When Stanley Kubrick passed away suddenly in 1999 during post-production on his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, he left behind several unproduced projects. The biggest of these was a film called A.I: Artificial Intelligence, which was going to be Stanley's next film. Steven Spielberg, who was a close friend of Stanley Kubrick, picked up the film where Kubrick left off, with the result being one of the more polarizing films Spielberg has ever made but also one I think is due for some re-evaluation.
In the late 22nd Century, rising sea levels from global warming has wiped out several coastal cities, including New York City, and human population is dwindling, giving the rise of Mecha beings, highly advanced humanoid robotic beings capable of thoughts and emotions. The newest model is a young boy named David (played by Haley Joel Osment). The prototype is sent to Henry and Monica Swinton (played by Sam Robards and Frances O'Connor), whose own son, Martin (played by Jake Thomas) is currently in suspended animation until a cure for a mystery ailment can be found. Monica is initially resistant to the idea of David being in the house, but begins to warm up to him, eventually initiating what is called an imprinting process that was cause David to think of Monica as his actual mother and be able to love her unconditionally. For awhile, things are looking up as Monica continues to bond with David and gives him an advanced robotic "Super Toy" teddy bear named, appropriately, Teddy (voiced by Jack Angel). Things take a turn when the doctors find a cure for Martin's ailment and he is able to come home. Not taking well to there being an imposter in the house and jealous of David's relationship with his mother, Martin starts to try to sabotage David's placement in the home. He tells David to go cut a lock of Monica's hair in the middle of the night, with Monica awakening to find David standing by her with a pair of scissors, alarming both Monica and Henry. Following a further incident between Martin and David at a family pool party leads Henry to persuade Monica to return David to his creator for destruction. Unable to go through with it, she abandons him in the woods to live as an unregistered Mecha with Teddy. Devastated, David and Teddy encounter other unregistered and obsolete mecha, including another one on the run after being framed for murder, Gigolo Joe (played by Jude Law). The two are captured by the purveyors of an anti-Mecha "Flesh Fair" where old Mechas are destroyed to cheering crowds. Gigolo Joe and David narrowly escape when members of the crowd have trouble believing David is a Mecha and the crowd shift towards letting David go. Escaping the flesh fair with Joe and Teddy, David sets out on a delusional mission to find The Blue Fairy, the character from the Pinocchio storybook Monica used to read to him in his attempt to become a real boy so he can return to Monica, convinced that will allow her to love him again.
This film is a unique blending of both the sensibilities of Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg crafted the final screenplay for the film from the story treatments and storyboards developed for the film. He also had lengthy discussions with Kubrick about the film and on more than one occasion, Kubrick tried to get Spielberg to direct the film instead, stating it played more to Spielberg's sensibilities. Yet, the film still feels genuinely like a Kubrick film much more so than a Spielberg film. The themes of the story about humanity and what exactly makes someone real, as well as the core of human nature that play out in the film are ones that Kubrick examined time and again in his films and are present throughout here. The character of David is an interesting one. At the beginning of the film, he is all robot and clearly responding only to his programming. But the more time he spends with Monica and then later Martin, he begins to learn and develop. He begins displaying genuine human emotions, such as jealousy. As the film continues, David grows and develops as the line between man and machine gets increasingly blurrier. As a viewer, I began to wonder if David's obsession with being reunited with Monica just part of his programming, or had he developed genuine feeling for her? And if we are able to create machines that can exhibit and have complex emotional responses, regardless if they were created by the miracle of life or by humans, don't they deserve to live just the same? It is this very question that makes the Flesh Fair segment of the film so horrifying to me, as all these different Mechas are tortured and torn apart for the entertainment of the masses. The film asks the audience some difficult questions and doesn't provide easy answers. It's a film that has stuck with me both when I first saw in in theaters back in 2001 and now, seventeen years later. I've always liked this film for it's complexity and how it explores it's story.
The acting in this film is great, starting with Haley Joel Osment as David. It's a fantastic performance in a role that would be very difficult to pull off. He starts off the film very robotic and cold, everything feels like a programmed response. Yet, as it goes on and David grows and evolves throughout the film and with it so does Osment's portrayal of David. He is able to make David's growth so gradual that it sneaks up on the viewer. Jude Law is great at the prostitute Mecha Gigolo Joe, providing a sense of care and tenderness to his character, yet still comes off as robotic as well. It's a fine line but Law manages to pull is off. Jack Angel provides the voice of Teddy, the sort of Jimminy Cricket to David's Pinocchio, and remains a faithful companion trying to warn him away from dangers throughout their journey together. He conveys so much of the character through his voice and really made that character come to life in a wonderful way, adding an unexpected sense of maturity to a child's toy.
I feel that all these years later, A.I: Artificial Intelligence deserves a re-evaluation. Initially received as a flawed film, a lost Kubrick masterpiece ruined by Steven Spielberg, with criticism directed towards the climax of the film. Except the ending of the film was always what was intended by Stanley Kubrick from the very beginning. It's a surprisingly complex film that asks some serious questions about the nature of life and what forms it can take despite how it was created, especially as our technological development continues to grow and evolve. Not only is this film a wonderful tribute from Spielberg to Stanley Kubrick, but I think it's also one of Spielberg's best films as well.
