The Guy Can't Help It
by Nathaniel
of The Film Experience

"Is this now?" Well, is it? Because it feels like last summer all over again. Just one year ago, Spielberg unveiled what at first appeared to be a sci-fi epic for adults, a dark fable about the dire effect of technological advances on our basic humanity and ability to love. The movie began promisingly, raised dozens of fascinating questions and offered much to recommend it by way of performance and striking visual pleasures. But then it completely fell apart in the final third. It felt to this viewer as if the maker didn't believe in his own creation. Perhaps he thought the audience wouldn't understand, so he backloaded the end of the story in exposition. And at the last moment, after the avalanche of words, he retreated safely into optimism, burying the resonance in overt and unearned sentiment. That film was A.I. Artificial Intelligence. I was watching it. I was loving it. And then I threw my hands in the air with disbelief and frustration.

"I'm so tired of the future" ...because this summer I'm reliving that film all over again with Minority Report. Here comes the same cycle of anticipation, joy - even awe - giving way to frustration, anger, and disbelief. At first glance, and indeed in every conceivable media outlet, Spielberg has promised a "dark and edgy" dystopian fantasy about the dangers posed by technology to our basic humanity. Like A.I. before it, Minority Report is fairly bursting at the seams with promise. It's filled with muscular filmmaking, thrilling set pieces, gorgeous production values, and an intriguing premise.

The story takes place roughly fifty years from now. A scientist has created a Pre-Crime unit, harnessing the telepathic abilities of three "Pre-Cogs" to predict murders before they happen. The gifted trio is submerged in a creepy vitamin-rich liquid, and doped up to best serve their function. They exist only to prophesy. Their visions are uploaded into imagery for the Pre-Crime Unit to see. The predicted names of doomed victims and their eventual murderers are laser chiseled onto wooden balls that pop out of tubes -a witty visual that recalls both the randomness of the lottery and the elaborate artifice that science fiction hocus-pocus of this sort relies upon. Once the imagery and balls are in place, specially trained cops jump into action, reviewing the projected imagery and racing off to prevent the murderous acts from actually occurring.

The controversial Pre-Crime division has effectively eliminated murder in its test area of D.C. Pre-Crime is up for a nationwide vote and the future safety of your family depends on its infallibility as a system. But what system is ever without glitches? Soon, our protagonist, pre-crime believer detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise), is named by the Pre-Cogs as a perpetrator. He will murder a man he's never heard of in less than two days. So off the detective runs to avoid a life sentence for a crime he doesn't believe he'll commit.

That's the initial setup, and it's a grand one. But where does Mr. Spielberg take us then? What will the director do? "Ruuunnnnnnn!" Yes, run. Run, from one dazzling set-piece to another, of course. The movie moves breathlessly, pausing only for Spielberg's beloved exposition. But mostly the film just runs. It runs further and further from its carefully created quagmire of technological and ethical questions until it is firmly ensconced in safety and convention. It devolves into a whodunit and love story.

The love story here is between John Anderton and his dead son. Minority Report never becomes as queasily mawkish as A.I. was in its relentless mother-love. But it comes close. It's a mark of Samantha Morton's brilliance as an actress that she pulls off the film's silliest gambit, a monologue about the unlived future of John Anderton's murdered son. But save the film she can't. For despite all the incongruity and self-immolation that comes from grafting hope, love, and optimism onto a sci-fi noir nightmare about the loss of privacy and free will, the film might still have worked save for one other problem: the storytelling.

Steven Spielberg is unquestionably a gifted director. He borrows from the best sources, he intuits the most dramatic visual solutions to little moments, he taps into primal audience fears and emotions. But contrary to popular belief, he is not an inspired storyteller. Here, just like last year, he's created unforgettable sequences, delivered absorbing and transporting imagery, guided his actors to vivid characterizations, but has again failed to tell a tale well or commit to his theme. Minority Report has less thematic dead weight than A.I., so it's a brisk moviegoing experience, but its plot is just as over-the-top and overstuffed. Like the earlier film it eventually crumbles under the weight of too many climaxes. It also loses its sense of urgency when one of the climaxes depends entirely on secondary characters - the stars Cruise, Morton, and Colin Farrell go AWOL for awhile, leaving it up to three minor characters with little audience investment to carry the story. The last half hour is a travesty of sentimentality, exposition, and auteurial self-delusion.

Minority Report is entertaining for a spell, but chases away its own complexities and even its own interior logic. Spielberg is like a father who tells his kids scary bedtime stories but can't bear it if they have nightmares. He creates fear and then hugs it away. He's so intent on leaving the audience happy that in the end he abandons the movie's carefully constructed and effective color schemes for the warm golden glow of hearth and home, restores the protagonist's damaged soul, and even goes so far as to place three of the characters in a cottage reading old leather bound books, technology nowhere in sight. Ah, the safety of hearth and home. It's enough to make audiences longing for intelligent science fiction scream "Murrrr-derrr."

I'm the new gifted precog and this is my vision: Here comes the red ball: "Victim: Minority Report, the movie that could have been." Here comes the next ball: "Perpetrator: Steven Spielberg." This review is my minority report. I've uploaded it from my brain to this page. Can you see that Spielberg has gotten away with it again? "Can you see?"

©2002 Nathaniel Rogers
CineScene