Minority Report

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.