[7/16/2002 12:27:40 PM | Andy Kovacs]
Minority Report

Like most American men my age, I am a long time Spielberg fan. My favorite movie of all time is Jaws. That film scared me so much that I used to be afraid of anything that touched me while swimming, even if it were in a pool. Spielberg has done so many great movies in the past 3 decades that any movie of his instantly becomes an event. And Minority Report was an event I was really anticipating.

Until I saw it.

Technically, it's look is awesome. I liked the way it was shot. I liked how each scene had an almost metallic look to it. The vision of the future was encouraging and discouraging at the same time. The cars looked cool. The jetpacks looked really cool, just like I always hoped there would be in my lifetime. The retina-scanning-personal-advertising was a little upsetting from an anti-big brother standpoint.

All that aside, however, I thought the movie was pretty lame. I thought that the characters were pretty much cardboard cutouts:

Tom Cruise: the still-mourning divorced father
Max von Sydow: the hero's mentor
Colin Farrell: the "do-gooder" who wants it all

Tom Cruise's character, actually, was a little more interesting than the rest in that he does drugs! He's a grieving-workaholic-drug-abusing-precrime-agent. Very cool.

The story itself is pretty good, though there are some inconsistencies inherent. The most glaring of which is the crime that Cruise is supposed to commit. Anderton (Cruise) explains early in the movie that crimes of passion only give about a 3-4 hour lead-time, if that. Anderton's crime, a crime of passion, gives his unit a full 72 hour lead-time. Are the PreCogs playing favorites here? There are other inconsistencies, but this was the most glaring to me.

I think that most of the reason I didn't like this movie as much as I had hoped was because I think that Spielberg has forgotten how to end a movie. He's wrapped this movie up so tightly that there is absolutely no doubt as to the outcome of PreCrime. I would have liked the movie more had it ended about 20 minutes sooner. I would have loved for the film to have ended with Anderton being arrested. Or even if it had ended 5 minutes sooner. I didn't need the last little bit about how PreCrime was disbanded.

This is exactly the same problem I had with A.I. If that movie would have ended 30 minutes sooner, with Haley on the bottom of the ocean staring at the Blue Fairy statue with the little nuclear bear, I would have loved that movie and it probably would have knocked Jaws out of 1st place. But alas, Spielberg has once again killed what could have been a truly incredible movie.

I give this movie ** out of four because of the aesthetic look of the film.

–andy


[7/16/2002 11:10:04 AM | Andy Kovacs]
Quote of the day for 7-16-02

"If you ain't got socks, you ain't got much.
But if you got 'em, you might as well pull 'em up!"
- Bruce Campbell


[7/16/2002 4:25:37 PM | Andy Kovacs]
I don't like Trendy people. They annoy me.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for a 6pm poetry reading at the internet jazz and coffee bar in Olde City, I left my laptop at home, and I forgot to wear my mock turtleneck today. When will it end?!