Minority Report: Subversive and Excellent

One thing I absolutely love about Steven Spielberg is his sheer creative range. The man has directed everything from war epics like Saving Private Ryan to high-concept fantasies such as Jurassic Park to even comedies like Catch Me if You Can, and many, many more movies both alike and different from the examples I gave here. It's a remarkable attribute for a director to have, and it's why he's rightfully considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, director who has ever lived. Admittedly, I haven't seen his entire filmography, and that's why I'm here today to talk about Minority Report, which I just finished last night. Forgive me if you've already seen it, as the movie is approaching 23 years old - I now treat this review blog as a journal of what I watch as much as I do a review site. Yes, this movie is very good, and I hope that I'm able to shed some light on why with some of my thoughts.

Minority Report, set in the year 2054, is a 2002 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's 1954 novel that follows John Anderton, the head of something called Precrime, a government agency that can detect crimes before they're committed. Problems arise for John when he himself is projected to commit murder and forced to go on the run from his own agency.

From its very beginning, Minority Report uses some extremely effective and unsettling tricks to make its world seem incredibly real, among them an incredibly unsettling fake commercial for Precrime that grounds the movie in a weird quasi-realism while evoking a lot of the "safety-via-regulation" political commercials we see today, and I say that however you may feel about proposed government safety regulations. What's more, the movie asks a lot of interesting questions about ethics. For example, is it right to punish or even detain someone because of a crime they haven't committed yet? The movie pushes this question to some extreme lengths, turning it on our main protagonist, John, in some incredibly thought-provoking ways.

The story itself - that of the sudden outcast running from their former allies - is familiar enough, but the way it is presented is incredibly fresh and strikes a nice balance between being familiar enough to easily grasp and yet challenging enough to take you in new directions. The movie can be somewhat predictable at points, but as far as fundamental storytelling goes, Minority Report obviously knows what it's doing. The movie uses some intelligent narrative tricks as well. If you've read my blog before, you may know that I love timers, and Minority Report uses one to great effect, eventually giving John exactly 51 minutes until he is projected to commit murder. This trick gave the movie a welcome sense of urgency, propelling its plot along at a deft and timely pace.

Have you ever heard of the rule of the unfired gun? In short, the rule states that if a gun or other weapon is introduced in a movie, whether literally or metaphorically, it must eventually be used. Well, the movie takes this plot trick literally, even having the audacity to introduce said gun as a ceremonial object, so it carried with it a feeling of naturality, escaping the sense that it existed merely because Spielberg wanted or needed to shoot somebody. And if all these intelligent tricks from Spielberg weren't enough, this movie also effectively tricks you into thinking that you know everything about it, and when you reach its climax, you'll find out that you really didn't know much of anything at all. The movie's climax is just so raw and infuriating in all the right ways and makes you question not only John's motives but also your own perception of his future murder. In short, the climax makes a lot of sense.

Now, the movie's not perfect, and it occasionally falls prey to some conjectural exposition in the third act - in other words, the need to drop a long monologue explaining everything - and this is an uncharacteristic misstep for an otherwise steller movie that had been all but spotless up to this point. Thankfully, the conjecture was quickly swapped for a shocking change of pace, so shocking that I almost considered dropping this complaint entirely - almost. But despite its imperfections, Minority Report is an extremely good movie, even if it probably would have been better off adding an additional twenty minutes or so to flesh out some of its conclusions instead of immediately jumping to some long monologues. This movie is intelligent and fresh and asks a lot of hard questions without ever really answering them, instead leaving a lot of interpretation up to the audience. And in a culture that doesn't understand or appreciate the idea of subtlety, this is an incredibly welcome approach.

I really, really liked Minority Report. It's a really solid science fiction movie that takes a familiar concept - the hero on the run - and uses it to ask a lot of legitimately challenging questions about the ethical weight of surveillance and punishment. What's more, it's also a well-acted, well-plotted, and occasionally shocking movie, even if it sometimes is conversely narratively formulaic and briefly victim to writing itself into a corner. I'm surprised I haven't seen it until now, and if you haven't seen it either, I'd heartily suggest it to you. It's a satisfying dose of thinking man's sci-fi here, an effective dose of feeling man's empathy there, and all-around a supremely well-crafted movie everywhere.

Spielberg is firing on all cylinders, and it's incredibly impressive to see.

Minority Report - 9/10

Luke 12:2-3