Minority Report

I read a lot of previous posts about this movie. This is one of the best films of the year, and of recent years. This is a perfect blend of action, suspense, thrills and film-noir. The plot is intelligent and fresh. People saying it is not original must have slept through the movie. Tom Cruise is fantastic, Colin Farrell is amazing, as well as Samantha Morton. Spielberg again proves that he is the master of cinema. A truly great director. I'll agree, the ending was a little too happy, but not worth complaining about. This film is not about product placement as previously suggested, it is simply a entertaining and yet realistic glimpse of what our future may look like, as advertising becomes more advanced and intrusive. The film creates many moral questions and issues, and should leave you thinking. Is being arrested for doing something you actually havn't commited yet fair? It is worth seeing again and again. As a film lover and critic, i can say it is one amazing movie.

May be this film has some flaws but while watching it I wasn't too distracted by that. Here we have one of the greatest directors alive (Steven Spielberg), a very big star (Tom Cruise) with a great ensemble (Max von Sydow, Colin Farrell, Peter Stormare, Samantha Morton, Tim Blake Nelson) around him, a good cinematography (Janusz Kaminski) and a nice score by John Williams all packed in a great story (based on the novel by Philip K. Dick) with perfect visual effects.

In the year 2054 murders can be predicted and stopped before they happen. If you were about to kill but stopped you are locked. Tom Cruise is one of the agents who stops those murders. Then he discovers the next murder they have to stop will be committed by himself.

I will not reveal more of the plot. The story itself is great. It is intelligent, but also exciting with great action scenes. The visuals are truly beautiful and perfectly support the sci-fi story. If you like action thrillers and you don't mind they are set in the future (with some futuristic gadgets) this is your film. 9/10.

It's the year 2054 and mankind through the good graces of pioneering criminologist Max Von Sydow we're about to abolish crime all together. Von Sydow employs three psychics, no doubt the three best in the world and while it looks life is a pretty dull thing for them, spending all that time in water the better to receive images they're doing yeoman service to mankind anticipating murders to come. Right at the beginning of the film we see them in action as police are dispatched to capture Arye Gross as he's about to murder his wife and her boy toy.

But some disturbing images come in regarding police chief Tom Cruise murdering a man who he doesn't even know. Now Cruise is a Richard Kimble like fugitive and he hasn't done the terrible deed he's supposed to do. But one of the water bound psychics turns in a different interpretation of the images she sees. It's that Minority Report that Cruise is interested in so Samantha Morton is taken by Tom who wants very much to find out what's going so he can alter his destiny if possible.

I won't say more other than destinies can be altered and images can be manipulated and wrongly interpreted by some malevolent forces at work.

Cruise and Von Sydow and the rest of the cast turn in some fine performances for Steven Spielberg. And Spielberg's own vision of the future is fascinating. I did love those images of horses making a comeback as a method of transportation. I'm guessing that fossil fuels had polluted the planet enough and we wanted biodegradable waste once again.

Science fiction is always interesting, even the worst future films offer us someone's vision of the future be Steven Spielberg or Ed Wood. Spielberg at least has the talent to bring it off.

And maybe crime prevention taken to its ultimate is not such a good thing. Watch Minority Report and see how you feel.

This gets high marks for being an involving film that, despite a long length of almost two- and-a-half hours, keeps ones interest all the way. Being a Stephen Spielberg-directed film, it's no surprise that the photography is first-rate. This is nice-looking movie. Tom Cruise also was very good in here, not the obnoxious character he sometimes portrays (or did more often in his younger days.).

The film is a good mixture of action and suspense. Only the one chase scene was overdone with Rambo-like mentality of the good guys not getting hit when they should, and vice- versa.

The subject matter is interesting, too: what would do you (or the police) had very reliable information on crimes that were about to be committed, that you could prevent things from happening before they actually did?

I recognized two people in here who went on shortly thereafter to become recognizable in TV series: Kathryn Morris ("Cold Case") and Neal McDonough ("Boomtown"). Add Colin Farrell, Max Von Sydow, Samantha Morton and you have an interesting cast. I am of the opinion that this is one of Spielberg's underrated gems.

Minority Report is the latest film from Stephen Spielberg that stars Tom Cruise as a cop from the year 2054, who works in the pre-crime division of the Washington D.C police department. The division's ability to stop murders before they happen is based on the psychic ability of three people who were mutant byproducts of a failed genetic program designed to help babies born from drug-dependent mothers. Cruise's character, John Anderton, is motivated by the loss of his own son, who was abducted and murdered six years earlier. Accordingly, he's a strong supporter of the controversial program, whose opponents feel it could potentially make an error and people might be wrongfully convicted, if not potentially rehabilitated. That action begins when Anderton is identified as a future killer, and he hits the road running. This may sound a little like The Fugitive, but in this case, you don't know if the man on the run is--or, rather, will be--guilty.

Based on a short story by futurist Phillip K. Dick, author of Blade Runner, the atmosphere of a dark world with high technology having gotten out of hand, almost as though it snuck up on us without our knowing, remains the theme. To remind us that we aren't controlled by technology, but are nonetheless overrun by it, there are frequent references to current-day familiarities, such as department stores and restaurants, such as The Gap and McDonalds, where impressively entertaining high-tech mass marketing gadgets know what you've purchased before and offer new suggestions for consideration. (Sounds like a visit to amazon.com?) Spielberg lightens up the tone with his signature wit and humorous quips and visuals now and then, as opposed to Ridley Scott's more serious and consistently dark visualization portrayed in Blade Runner.

As a plotline, Minority Report is intelligent, has a good consistent flow, isn't always predictable (at least not that long before it happens), has many twists and turns with legitimate dead-ends, and above all, tells a plausible story (even if the basic premise itself requires considerable suspension of disbelief). As Anderton begins to unravel the true story about the corruption behind the pre-crime program, he is lead even further towards his destination as predicted by the `pre-cognitives' who predicted his crime. To tell any more of the story would disclose too much; besides, it isn't necessary. You know all you need to know here.

The best parts of the movie are so good – from the high-tech special effects to the light-hearted humorous moments to the good, steady flow of the action and plotline – that the problems with the film are easily forgiven. That said, my main gripe is the presumption that, in the future, anyone convicted of a crime before it happens is immediately sent to a state of suspended animation, an alternative form of the death penalty. This is obviously one of the main sources of controversy within the storyline, but anyone can see that, in almost all cases, the predicted murders were not premeditated, if not potentially accidental, in which case, psychological counseling and some form of probation would be enough. There's nothing to suggest in the film that the context is a police state, which would allow the premise to make sense. Yet, so much of the movie is based on this premise, that may be bothersome to the discerning viewer. There are many such similar oversimplifications, each of which could be quite easily solved with a minor change or a quick dialog line or two, hence a mild sense of sloppiness in direction.

Still, in the end, these didn't bother me that much. I still had a great time, and enjoyed it as the frivolous and wonderfully playful action/thriller it was intended to be.