bnorthup
06-26-2002, 02:18 AM
Minority Report (PG-13)
At the Myrna Loy
3 stars
Fast forward into the past
By Brent Northup
Once a teacher, always a teacher! Here’s Steven Spielberg’s report card for his new science fiction film, “Minority Report.” Beginning=A Ending=C Sci fi premise=A Sci fi logic=B Technical effects=A Ability to hold our attention continuously=A .
So we’ve got four A’s, one B and one C for a 3.5 GPA – short of Phi Beta Kappa, but good enough for the Dean’s List.
“Minority Report” left me convinced that Spielberg is suspended somewhere between the rose-colored director of his “E.T.” early years and the darker more Kubrickian vision of his “Schindler’s List” later years. In this film, he tells a fundamentally dark and disturbing tale, with heavy overtones of Orwell and Kafka, but feels compelled to drive the story to a smiley-face happy ending.
The story is intriguing. We are in the year 2046. We have learned to foretell the future, enabling our department of Precrime to stop crimes before they happen. People are arrested who have done absolutely nothing wrong – but who were on the verge of doing something really bad. Needless to say, this disturbs civil rights advocates – but society, overall, seems happy at the radical reduction in crime.
Tom Cruise plays one of the Precrime cops, who seeks out would-be murderers and arrests them before they kill someone. Then one day, the Precrime department receives a report that says that Cruise himself will kill someone – and the pursuer becomes the pursued.
I loved this premise. Sadly, the promising premise devolves into a routine murder mystery, with a thoroughly unsatisfying ending. Additionally, the sci-fi script has logical holes big enough to slide a calculator through.
But most disturbing is the ending, which I will keep politely to myself. Suffice it to say that Spielberg spends two hours painting a convincingly dark, disturbing view of the future, only to suddenly patch things up and end optimistically. E.T. has confronted Armageddon, but manages to return home with nary a hair on his cute alien head singed.
But having started with a stream of grumbles, I have to admit I was transfixed from first frame to last. Tom Cruise, in Spielberg’s hands, is exceptional as the spider suddenly entangled in his own web. The visuals are wonderful. John Williams’ score is moody and compelling.
Best of all, the film raises questions about civil liberties that urgently need to be asked. In an age when people can be fired, not hired or denied insurance simply because of a genetic predisposition to disease, society desperately needs to address the ethical issues of punishing people on the basis of a cloudy crystal ball.
My favorite character is a "pre-cog" named Agatha. She's a gifted medium who can see the future - and predict crime. She's been exploited for this power - suspended in water and asked to foresee crimes all day, and all night. She is chillingly effective in raising questions about dehumanizing one person in order to save others. The end justifies the means in this Spielbergian world, and it's a frightening prognosis.
Spielberg raises all the right questions, but is awkward in proposing solutions. Kubrick would have answered them obliquely and pessimistically. Spielberg is a fundamentally happy fellow, who just can’t bring himself to predict rain. The truth likely lies somewhere in between these cinematic extremes.
END
At the Myrna Loy
3 stars
Fast forward into the past
By Brent Northup
Once a teacher, always a teacher! Here’s Steven Spielberg’s report card for his new science fiction film, “Minority Report.” Beginning=A Ending=C Sci fi premise=A Sci fi logic=B Technical effects=A Ability to hold our attention continuously=A .
So we’ve got four A’s, one B and one C for a 3.5 GPA – short of Phi Beta Kappa, but good enough for the Dean’s List.
“Minority Report” left me convinced that Spielberg is suspended somewhere between the rose-colored director of his “E.T.” early years and the darker more Kubrickian vision of his “Schindler’s List” later years. In this film, he tells a fundamentally dark and disturbing tale, with heavy overtones of Orwell and Kafka, but feels compelled to drive the story to a smiley-face happy ending.
The story is intriguing. We are in the year 2046. We have learned to foretell the future, enabling our department of Precrime to stop crimes before they happen. People are arrested who have done absolutely nothing wrong – but who were on the verge of doing something really bad. Needless to say, this disturbs civil rights advocates – but society, overall, seems happy at the radical reduction in crime.
Tom Cruise plays one of the Precrime cops, who seeks out would-be murderers and arrests them before they kill someone. Then one day, the Precrime department receives a report that says that Cruise himself will kill someone – and the pursuer becomes the pursued.
I loved this premise. Sadly, the promising premise devolves into a routine murder mystery, with a thoroughly unsatisfying ending. Additionally, the sci-fi script has logical holes big enough to slide a calculator through.
But most disturbing is the ending, which I will keep politely to myself. Suffice it to say that Spielberg spends two hours painting a convincingly dark, disturbing view of the future, only to suddenly patch things up and end optimistically. E.T. has confronted Armageddon, but manages to return home with nary a hair on his cute alien head singed.
But having started with a stream of grumbles, I have to admit I was transfixed from first frame to last. Tom Cruise, in Spielberg’s hands, is exceptional as the spider suddenly entangled in his own web. The visuals are wonderful. John Williams’ score is moody and compelling.
Best of all, the film raises questions about civil liberties that urgently need to be asked. In an age when people can be fired, not hired or denied insurance simply because of a genetic predisposition to disease, society desperately needs to address the ethical issues of punishing people on the basis of a cloudy crystal ball.
My favorite character is a "pre-cog" named Agatha. She's a gifted medium who can see the future - and predict crime. She's been exploited for this power - suspended in water and asked to foresee crimes all day, and all night. She is chillingly effective in raising questions about dehumanizing one person in order to save others. The end justifies the means in this Spielbergian world, and it's a frightening prognosis.
Spielberg raises all the right questions, but is awkward in proposing solutions. Kubrick would have answered them obliquely and pessimistically. Spielberg is a fundamentally happy fellow, who just can’t bring himself to predict rain. The truth likely lies somewhere in between these cinematic extremes.
END