First let me say: I enjoyed Minority Report. It wasn’t a terrible movie. It was nice for a Sunday afternoon. But I was shocked when I looked back on the threads that were created about it just after it came out in the States and everyone was lavishing it with praise. There were so many glaring flaws in that film, I wonder if we were all watching the same movie.
The “perp” and “victim” balls. Come on. I mean COME ON!! I realize this is science fiction, and there’s alot more crap to swallow than just this, but they have hooked biological beings to a machine that produces little neatly carved balls with people’s names properly spelled that must roll through a series of nifty little tubes before landing in their respective positions?
Anderton’s remaining eye is used TWICE to breach security at the Dept. of Pre-crime. Despite the fact that he is a wanted criminal, no alarms go off EITHER TIME. This is especially dumb considering the fact that the second time “he” (his eyes) gets into the facilities, he is already in containment! I guess in the future they no longer recind the security access of convicted criminals?
The beautifully tied up ending. The bad guy nobly takes his own life. Anderton gets back with his wife, and in the final scene she’s pregnant. Agatha and all the other precogs get to go live in the country side reading books all day. Gag me with a sick stick.
Minority Report was a fun ride, but it didn’t run as deep as it could have, there were some ridiculous details like the ones above, and quite a bit of just plain sloppy film making. I recall a couple of quick and graceless editing cuts that were quite jarring. How did so many people justify calling this the best film they had seen all year?
Well, the ball thing was the sort of gothically complex detail that makes Phillip K. Dick (who wrote the story the movie was based off) so entertaining. It’s not particularly realistic, but I didn’t mind it too much, as it didn’t directly influence the plot.
The eye thing… Well, the first one was kinda dumb. At a stretch, I’d call it beauracratic incompetence. But it’s a pretty valid complaint.
As for the second time, I liked the theory that everything that happens after Cruise is put into the stasis tube is, in fact, a hallucination. As they put him in, the guard says something like, “They say you have dreams while you’re in there. Whatever you most want out of life” Certainly, escaping, killing the bad guy, and reuniting with his wife would be at the top of Cruise’s fantasy life. As would rescuing the pre-cogs and letting them live a happy life in the countryside and his beloved mentor taking the honorable way out.
Why I thought it was one of the best movies I’d seen all year: First, the competition. “Best movie of the year” is pretty light praise, these days. Second, the look and feel of the movie. It was one of the most convincing depictions of the future I’ve seen in a while. It was all the little details that I loved. The talking cereal boxes, the personalized advertising, the holographic holiday snaps, and so forth. Third, I thought the movie was beautifully shot. I didn’t have any problems with poor edits. Overall, it was one of Spielbergs strongest directing efforts. Finally, I found the ideas the movie tackled to be pretty interesting, even if the plot fumbled occasionally. It wasn’t exactly groundbreaking philosophizing, but it sure was a cut above the average Armageddon crap that passes for science fiction these days.
I hope I’m not the only one who saw the ending coming ten miles away.
MAJOR SPOILER
I mean, just the fact that his boss was played by Max fucking von Sydow was pretty much a giveaway. I like von Sydow, but he often plays menacing characters and having the hero’s trusted colleague (boss) and friend turn out to be the villain? Such a cliche! It ruined the movie for me, because I knew basically how it would end early on. Sure, the future world was well-crafted and the effects were cool, but I expect a more interesting story from a director like Spielberg.
You should have seen it like I did. My sister “spoiled” it for me by telling me that he goes to jail at the end of the movie. I had no reason to think she was telling a lie – she can be a vindictive bitch at times. At about the time that he gets captured and put into prison I was expecting the credits to start rolling. In retrospect I do wish he’d ended the film there since it was far more emotionally powerful than the unexpected next 15 minutes or so.
SPOILERS
I agree that the last 15 mintues are lame though I am semi-partial to the theory that it represents Anderton’s day-dream when he is in jail.
As for the eye I don’t think it’s that implausible. Remember the letter sent by the INS to the dead hijackers months after 9-11. Bureacratic incompetence is a fact of life.
Overall, apart from the ending, I thought the film was brilliant with some of the best sequences I have ever seen particularly with Agatha in the shopping mall and the mechanical spiders. Not the best film of the year but a damn good one.
About the wood balls–that wasn’t created by Phil Dick–it was just index cards in the story. Anderton explained in the movie that once the balls are generated, the unique wood grain allows a permanent and (theoretically) tamper-proof record.
SPOILERS
I think the ending of the story was better: Spoiler: Anderton shoots the guy to take the fall and prove that pre-crime works.
Actually, it was quite a bit better than I was expecting from Spielberg. I’d pretty much given up on him as an interesting or innovative director. I was genuinely startled by how much I like this movie, considering his recent films. (Ask me about Saving Private Ryan sometime.)
Yeah, but it sure felt like something Dick would have put in one of his novels, like an electric sheep.
The wooden balls are meant to symbolise the old incongruously juxtaposed with the new. So that although its about the future, the moral of the story is about the present. Or something.