Minority Report

One of the conceits that I found difficult to stomach was that in this ‘uber’-tech soceity the method by which precogs identify murders is carving unique wooden balls.

HA!!!! I TOTALLY agree!!! How bizarre is that??? I had the same thought. Like, um, wouldn’t it have been more useful to do like a future-google mashup and have the name automatically associated with their location and life details? Instead, we get this little wooden ball carved…

What I don’t get is, how the hell would Lamar Burgess know that John Anderton would try to kill “Crow” in the appartment simply by giving Crow a picture of John’s son? Anderton would have needed to intend to kill him before the Precogs would have seen him murder Crow, but he had no way of knowing about Crow without following the red ball vision.

Hi Spider, that does certainly pose a problem. To me, this comes across as almost a fatalism issue (again, the issue with freewill). The presumption is that initially, this plot would have occurred differently. Notice that the picture above where John Anderton kills Crow is not where he’s standing when he finally gets to that circumstance. It’s slightly changed. So my guess is Burgess had a plot in mind that led Anderton to there, but based on Anderton’s knowledge, the course of events occurred differently, but STILL led him to end up there at the same time. And yes, this is a bit of a stretch to believe this would work out that way.

Me personally - I would probably try to get away from that time and place. I don’t know why Anderton was compelled, other than perhaps the issue that he was on the Lamb, and was looking for a hidden way out from all this.

I guess this will always be a testament to how out of tune I am with…well…just about everyone else. Everyone seemed to have huge problems with A.I., a film I found damn close to brilliant, and yet everyone seemed to love this one and praise it as some sort of landmark in sci-fi cinema. Odd, as I found it so thoroughly mediocre. I mean, by the time Anderton was literally chasing his eyeballs as they rolled away from him, I was laughing…and completely removed from any involvement in the story. (Not to mention the street doc who conveniently keeps a rotten sandwich right next to a fresh one in his fridge…ditto milk).

I had the same problem with this film as I do with just about any with any sort of psychic involved. What good are these precogs if they can’t foresee when someone’s pulling a fast one on them? And just how many films that involve a deceased child have to open with some sort of action/suspense scene followed, almost immediately, by the main character going home and watching a home video of said child? Christ, I rolled my eyes at that in “Timecop”…and this was twelve years ago!

Hi Case, I agree with you to an extent, but you must admit that every aspect of the production values really shine in Minority Report. The acting is terrific, as are the visuals. I do agree there are some story issues though.

Incidentally, when I listed Minority Report on my initial top 50 RT thread, I was expecting to get flack for not ranking it higher, but in fact I got a number of comments similar to yours. I did gyrate between a 7 or 8 star rating, but felt it was ultimately strong enough for 8 stars - clearly some would rank it 9, and others might give it a 6 rating (I can’t see lower than this though).

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I always thought that he left the rotten sandwich there just to be a dick.
What I found unlikely was that the precog would have been able to walk or use her muscles at all, having been so out of practice.
But Minority Report is still one of my favorite sci fi movies of all time. I can’t help it. I just enjoy it too much. And the cars rock.

Absolutely agree on the sandwich, and the milk for that matter. The dude was living there part time, so he clearly was using the place.

And yeah, she shouldn’t have been able to walk at all. Good point.

Already having read the short story this film was based on, I only had one qualm with the film… granted Tom Cruise did a good job with the role John Anderton, I think the role should have been handed to someone who could have portrayed the look of a drug-addicted, tired police chief. I think John Cusack could have played it off way better

It’s better than A.I., but that’s not saying much.

I was OK with Cruise’s performance here, but I kind of agree with you in that someone who’s life seemed more “ruined” would have worked better. Cruise certainly didn’t look that way physically, but did seem to get the mental part of it OK I thought.

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Isn’t it a bit odd that the evil plan revolves around setting someone up by placing a con in the future, and hoping that a time paradox leads your intended victim to find the guy he’s supposed to kill? I mean, huh?
The book had a much better ending

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i didn’t like this movie because of the inconsistency of the “precogs”
it’s first said that they are able to catch potential murderers by sensing their emotions and thoughts, and that they need to stay in the tanks to use their abilities. yet later in the film the female precog can predict the weather, etc.

the only cool part was the future GUI using hand gestures

The problem with the movie was this suffered through a number or writers, so the story was fairly piecemeal. Typical Spielbergian trappings thrown in didn’t help, like the corny jetpack chase scene (family eating dinner at the table), Anderton’s being the “broken” family somehow being reunited by all the drama. Colin Ferrell’s part I thought was a pointless red herring “L.A. Confidential” throwaway role. Some of the other silliness like the rotten sandwich (come on, how can you not love a Peter Stormare role?) and the rolling eyeballs was pretty goofy slapstick but I didn’t mind it. Spielberg really immersed himself in Kubrick’s style for this and A.I., and I think it really showed… the shots of Anderton approaching Dr. Hineman’s garden looked almost directly out of Clockwork Orange. Add in the “watching the clock tick” down to the his predicted murder was pure Hitchcock… even if a fair percentage of the flick is kneedeep in smarm and cheese it was worth it for the good stuff.

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minority report was an amazing flick. Cruise did an amazing job. the overall feel and look of the movie was very original, well thought out

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One thing which struck me in this film was how adverts would scan his eyes and then broadcast themselves right into his head, calling him by name. If I’m honest this fills me with more dread than any other cyberpunk speculations about the future. Ads are invasive enough as it is. We get them in our mail, our emails, on message boards (see below), on tv and radio, we get telemarketing calls.. I could go on..

There’d definitely be a market for adblocking these retinal biometrics.