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Minority Report
The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is, a good murder mystery conceived well before September 11th retelling a short story that was published long ago in 1956. The movie is half a work of philosophy and half a head-scratching what-if narrative exploring the merger of computers, extra-sensory perception, and genetic research. All of this is painted on the screen in the sad muted browns, sepias, blues and greys of an amateur watercolorist who can't keep the colors from turning to mud.
The conceit is the kind of classic conundrum that made science fiction great: the police in 2054 can tap the minds of three "pre-cogs" who see visions of murders a few hours before they will happen. Tom Cruise plays a cop who flies off in a jet pack to nab the soon-to-be-bad guys and lock them away before they kill. Can we really be sure the crime will be committed just as the pre-cognitives predict? Cruise is an earnest believer in the system's perfection until, it should be obvious, the system implicates him in the pre-murder of someone he's never met.
The yarn unfolds as a long string of chase scenes mixed with some flashbacks and some pre-cognitive dodges. Cruise's character, we're told, is a fast runner and he spends plenty of time running fast. The plot is crisp and layered enough to unfold several times. The hinge points are as good as the philosophical question they serve.
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary, with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19-year-old in an art school in Southern California. The unity of vision that delivered the oily dystopia of Bladerunner is missing this time. I wouldn't be surprised if someone tightened the budget screws in the middle of the film and sent them scrambling to save money on some scenes.
The tone coming from the actors is also a bit uneven. Spielberg managed to toss in funny moments in the Indiana Jones trilogy and whole schtick came together with the amazing certainty of comic-book escapism. The bits of humor in this movie's chase scenes, though, ruin the nervous paranoia and amped-up tension crackling through the narrative's ganglia. Is this supposed to be summer joy ride or a serious exploration of the meaning of justice?
These errors in execution don't matter too much because the storyline is so strong and central to our current struggle with terrorism. No one probably wants to hear that Dick wrote this story just a few years after the Supreme Court finally decided that it wasn't really legal to lock up Japanese-Americans on the off chance that they might take their orders from Tokyo. The movie theater where I saw the film is only a few miles from the prison that held much of Baltimore's City Council during the Civil War.
Despite the uncomfortable fact that moments like these happen again and again in history, there's no way to escape wondering whether Spielberg is some kind of pre-cog being who gets his version of the zeitgeist delivered early. The timing is just eerie.
Peter Wayner thinks his new book, Translucent Databases is about ten years ahead of its time. His book about steganography, Disappearing Cryptography , may be a few months late."
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19 year old in an art school in Southern California.
In the 1950s we were all promised flying cars through the amazing miracle that was atomic energy. But we're still driving plain old cars that run on gas. Not everything will change in the future. And also, I could see malls like the ones today being set up because of nostalgia.
Also, did anyone else notice that Spielberg switched camera lenses or something during some of those past-looking scenes? Everything looked fuzzier, like from glare or something.
we'll have cars that drive themselves down the sides of buildings, be able to prevent crimes from happening in the future, have really sweet video processing systems with haptic interfaces.
But we'll still have to sneakernet media from one workstation to another via removable media. Nothing ever changes.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
It was all there:
- the pointless "humorous" hijinks interrupting the flow (oh! the protagonist is going to eat a moldy sandwich! ha! ha! ha!)
- the sappy/happy ending when this movie really deserved an unhappy one
- the trite music from John Williams (which seemed especially bad this time...
- and worst of all, the constant need to explain every minor plot twist three times because Spielberg assumes (correctly?) that his audience is really quite stupid.
Minority Report would be a decent movie if it just wasn't so fucking annoying.is he even trying anymore?)
This review makes too great a logical leap by trying to tie the pre-cogs/precrime plot of Minority Report to the 'War on Terrorism'. Not only is it, well I don't really have a better word, stupid -- but it seems the reviewer is trying to make a political point. Albeit with all the striking power of a wet noodle.
/. editorial staff will try not to drop such obvious dreck on us in the future. Of course history tells me differently...
Sorry, this article doesn't cut it as a movie review -- or -- as a philosophical statement. It sucks on far too many levels. Moderate me offtopic if you like, but don't moderate as a troll or flamebait, this is truly my opinion and I stand behind it.
I would hope that the
Jack William Bell
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
***POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD***
(i don't give much away about what happens, but rather, what doesn't)
Maybe the original short story covers this, but I was miffed that this particular hole in the story was left untouched:
Why do they have to convict people of these crimes they haven't commited? (or whatever they call it when they arrest you for pre-crime) Why not intercept the criminal before the crime is commited, hold the suspect for like 72 hours, possibly giving them some kind of counseling, and then release them? If they never commited a crime, they can't really be guilty of it, so no harm, no foul. In the movie, they say that premeditated murder is almost extinguished, because no one is dumb enough to try it anymore. This would still be the case under my idea, and you could even consider imprisoning those who are repeat "offenders". But it would keep people from commiting crimes of passion, and allow them to continue their lives.
Thoughts, anyone?
The Free desktop that Just Works
It was a well executed movie, but there was some obviously biased left-wing exaggerations. Anyone who says this movie was realistic or "could happen" is a paranoid alarmist.
** SPOILERS BELOW **
First off, it seems the department of precrime has done away with the entire judicial system. You're caught and then hauled off and put in your little halo/tube thing with no trial or investigation. Also, if you think the American public would be cool with prisoners being plugged into the Matrix and sealed off, you're a moron.
If there in fact was a department of precrime, those who were prevented from committing murder would not be arrested but most likely be put into counseling along with restraining orders placed from those who were going to be killed. They wouldn't go to jail as if they committed a crime, simply because they didn't. If you think they would, you too are a paranoid alarmist idiot.
The kicker for me was at the end when the entire precrime system was abolished.. and this was something we were supposed to feel good about. Nevermind the fact that D.C. would probably shoot back to the number 1 murder rate city in the country overnight. Nevermind the fact that precrime could have been used legitimately and usefully, preventing murders by intervention but without punishment (what an idea!)
I also love the fact that our precog friends decide to live on a farm at the end where they can read books. Because as every good bleeding heart liberal knows, technology and society are evil. Please.
Oh, and of course everyone would be cool with them immersing the precogs in a vat of goo for all their lives. Starting the movie with this premise, something which would never be legitimate, and then breaking it down at the end to help us feel good about the conclusion is the cinematic equivalent of a straw man.
I realize it was just a movie, but I want could curb some of the alarmist reaction to this wholly unrealistic depiction of what the world would be like if we could accurately predict murder. Putting this out now after 9/11 makes it all too easy for the lefties to jump on it and say "See???" Don't let them.
--
okay. this is the one thing which bothered me also, other than why didn't the evil doctor just butcher and kill tom cruise out of revenge, instead of HELP him. anyway...
it goes like this. the old guy (who anderton works for) finds out that agatha has contacted anderton about her mother's murder. the old guy has to cover it up.
so he finds the sap (crowe) and pays him to be in a hotel room, acting like he killed anderton's son.
now -- this would still not be enough to trigger the pre-cogs vision, because without the vision, anderton would have NO IDEA how to find this guy. and what is MORE strange is that it is a "premeditated" murder.
so i can't tie it all together either. in any case, only a few of the names and the basic principle of precrime were taken from the short story, everything else was basically an entirely new story.
-rp
I agree. The presentation of the future is masterful. Like that residential suburb scene with the couple going by on a pair of horses. Does the reviewer think they decided to use HORSES because of budgetary concerns? Nonsense. Everything is deliberate. Spielberg consulted with a large group of world-renowned futurists to come up with a carefully thought out view of what the future might be like. They ended up with a mixture of high tech and old fashioned. A case can be made that Star Wars employs a similar motif.
As for the advertising... how much has the Coke logo changed in the last 50 years? Brand recognition is powerful, long lasting stuff.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Of course in the reviewer's own estimation, by this time everyone should wear pseudo-future space clothes and all restaurants are Taco Bell.
:))
I thought the mixture of futurism while maintaining modern elements is a pretty good guess. It's 50 years in the future, I don't see our society changing too much. But anything can happen. No one can predict the future (well, except maybe the precogs
This is just one view of the future, and it seems realistic enough. I thought it was done tastefully and thoughtfully, unlike such tripe as Battlefield Earth. My only qualm with the story was the ending, which, like AI, would have been better had they cut the last 10-15 minutes out.
Unfortunately there's a good chance this movie will still be around in 50 years - at which point we'll look back at it and laugh at the thought of owning a jet pack, laugh at the idea of driving a car down the side of a building (in anything other than a suicidal mood), and laugh that people are still making sci-fi movies with futuristic dates reachable in most peoples lifetimes.
I know someone else who'll be laughing: my HAL-9000 computer that I put together a few years ago.
insignificant sig
Willfully or not, you are misunderstanding the concern here. Your nominal citizen was challenging jurisdiction. But you know what? At least he got a trial! It wasn't enough for the President to say, "Oooh, he's a danger... better lock him up." In the current wave of illegality, the President and his agents have specifically and deliberately denied -- to acknowledged American citizens -- their right of habeus corpus, their right to know the charges against them, their right to face their accusers, their right to counsel, and their right to a speedy and impartial trial by their peers. What is the justification? That the President claims that they are enemy combatants. They cannot even get a judge to review that determination... if the President says it is so, it must be so.
I am not usually a paranoid anti-establishment type, but if you wrote up the list of law enforcement expansions of the last year and showed it to anyone -- but made sure not to say it was the US -- there would be only one question: Is this Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Assuming that there was anyone in the audience unfamiliar with the premise, was it necessary to set up the premise in at least four repetative sequences, any one of which would have done the job:
Each of these had a different purpose:
1. In the 15 minute opening arrest sequence.
This is to grab the audience. Most good action movies start out with this.
2. In the 5 minute discussion following that sequence.
This showed alternating viewpoints, something which was important, and also told a few intricacies in the system.
3. In the Robocop-like "Precrime" commercial.
This showed the propoganda in the world, which is important because in out world, this system would never be allowed.
4. AGAIN by the tour guide?
And finally, this was to handle the public's assumed outcry over the treatment of the Precogs. If they thought the Precogs were happy and healthy, there wouldn't be none.
A few others:
5. "If you don't wait twelve hours... you'll go blind." Or... maybe six.
I assume that he went blind in that eye.
9. Wouldn't the revelation of PSYCHICS have tremendous scientific reprocussions beyond precrime?
The movie just isn't about that. You're looking for something to complain about here.
11. Did anyone else get the feeling that this future had about 50 people in it total? I did not feel like this was a "real" world at all.
That could be said of a lot of movies, since most movies only involves a few people.
3. "Surely by now the precogs have predicted you're going to kill me. So you're caught in a paradox.. bwahaha" How the hell did Tom know what they predicted? They could have predicted what enivitably happened.
If Max wasn't going to kill him, there wasn't a problem. This was an effort to stave off his own death.
4. The surgeon who replaces Tom's eyes gives a big speech about getting screwed over, then does....nothing bad. Fixes the eyes, leaves a nice sandwich.
YES YES YES YES YES. Absolutely. This annoyed me to no end, and the only thing I can think of is that perhaps he tipped off precrime that Anderton was there.
3. The extra 20 minutes or so following that, which like was totally unnecessary and cheesy.
Typical Spielberg. Did you see A.I.?
4. What is the point of putting the precogs in a barn somewhere?
If they're far enough away from civilization, they won't get the nightmares.
I still don't see why murders stopped by precogs NECESSARILY need to lead to arrests and prosecutions. I mean, say they had stopped the murder of passion at the top of the story-- rather than putting the dreaded headphones on the husband, couldn't they have gotten him into some family counceling? I mean, having a precog to stop a murder doesn't automatically mean you have to prosecute the pre-murderer.
This was the point of the book, but it got lost in the translation.
You want a problem? Why is it that the precrime agency gets notifications that Anderton has gotten on a Metro (due to the retina scanners that are EVERYWHERE) but when he uses his old eyes to get into precrime, they see nothing. They don't even go looking for him until they see Agatha in the prediction and realize that he will eventually come back to get her.
Progress makes its changes upon the present day in bursts and halts. Some things change rapidly, other things take decades. Typically, the things that change the quickest are the "everyman luxuries" such as cars, computer devices, and clothing. Our ever evolving concept of what "looks modern" is part of what drives that. Take a look at a six year old computer, it looks boxy and antique already -- yet when that computer was produced, it was likely at the height of what people considered Neat. The things that do not change as rapidly are extreme luxuries, and non-luxury items. Of course, there are always exceptions, but in general this is the case.
To bring this back to the film, the types of things that you saw looking wildly different and futuristic were precisely the types of things that go through rapid periodic aesthetic modification. Cars, electronic devices, watches, and clothing. The types of things that did not change are the things that haven't really changed in the past few decades for us either.
Secondly, as far as logos go, these do not rapidly change too much either, at least the bigger companies do not, and for a very good reason. If you go about changing your logo every two years, it stops having as much subliminal impact -- unless your company is already a behemoth, and then changes can actually be considered innovative, and people come to expect them -- however they usually revolve around the core idea. Pepsi Corporation is a good example of a company that has reworked their logo frequently, while always retaining the basic design that we all know by sight. How often has Proctor & Gamble fiddle with their logo? Even Microsoft has managed to hang on to their logo for a few decades now. Changes are made, but they usually are not often made, and rarely are they drastic.
I for one think that the concept of the future was quite realistic, and I found it refreshing in a way to see a design team correctly assess the way the world changes. I absolutely love the way Blade Runner looks, it is one of my favorite movies, and the design is a big reason why -- but it isn't necessarily all that realistic.
V
I don't think anyone is denying the events that occurred. The problem is when we treat our response to terrorism as a war. Declaring a war on terrorism is as effective as declaring a war on murder. In fact, it's a lot like that. How do you declare war on murder? Find all people who are associated with murderers and plow tanks into them? That doesn't really solve the problem, all it does is make people think the problem is being dealt with. That difference is where the dog is being wagged.