"Minority Report" (2002): What Works/What Doesn't
"Minority Report" (2002): What Works/What Doesn't
The iconic film adaptation, authored by Philip K. Dick, has entered our collective consciousness as a "precog" foreboding of the pitfalls of a futuristic non-human-helmed society (AI anyone?) WATCH IT
Synopsis - Sometimes You’ve Already Met Your Heroes, and THEY are the Problem
Confession: I thought I had seen Minority Report, but I realized this weekend that I had never watched it in its entirety. I’ve grown so accustomed to hearing references from its “Brave New World” Utopian/dystopian premise and seeing clips, that my brain patch-worked the rest together, and boy was it off.
Subjectively, Minority Report is a remarkable film, but its 2:28 runtime can feel exhausting and had me resisting the urge to doom scroll periodically throughout the film. I took a few breaks, primarily due to my inability to sit still for more than 10 minutes, but this did not reflect the film's capacity to maintain my interest.
Back to this story, however…Like any good (Spielberg) story, human emotion and relationships are at the core. In this case, we have a just barely middle-aged and I might add, gorgeous Cruise as Agent John Anderton, who heads up a fictional Precrime Unit in 2054’s DC. Cruise serves as the film's moral compass, embodying integrity and compassion through his intense gaze and chiseled physique.
Backstory: The Precrime Unit can prevent crimes before they occur using some fancy AI eye (say this ten times fast), psychic technology. The methodology is controversial because they arrest and convict future murderers. They aren’t the bad guys. Full Stop. They stop the bad guys, or so Anderton believes.
Anderton’s Precrime origin story and his raison d’etre stem from his grief from the loss of his 6-year-old son, many years ago, at a public pool, where Anderton went underwater for less than a minute, as part of a game with his son, and his son disappeared forever. It’s every parent’s horror story and the real spook element tragedy of the film. Forget being arrested for a crime you don’t commit. Try losing a kid.
Anderton’s mentor and the villain of the story (when it’s not Colin Farrell’s Danny Witmer) is a rich man (Max Von Sydow) who is the Director of Precrime, and John’s frenemy or “fre-mininomenon” Lamar Burgess.
Sorry, but not sorry. Couldn’t resist a Chappell Roan reference. [Femininomenon] and Burgess is more than just a “frenemy” - His brand of nefariousness is an entire movement. Mentor, father figure, co-creator, ally, supporter, and the guy that comes at you with a scalding hot Papa John’s pizza in the face while shivving you in the gut with the pizza cutter. (Again, it’s a reference to the song)
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” - a homeless man with no eyes
IN SUMMARY
The film primarily serves as a cautionary tale, depicting a world where free will is sacrificed for a "soma-like" existence in an increasingly commercialized, big-government, police-state society. Holograms personalize the shopping experience at every turn, serving up your latest transactions through eye scans and manipulating consumers through the use of “wellness” tactics. It’s personalization people! Potential crimes can be fabricated and the real ones can be falsified to be registered as a glitch in the system, because big data rules. The Minority Report, that inkling of human “error” as it’s spun in the film, is our salvation - our ability to discern right from wrong - but in an increasingly binary world of cancellations, there is no place for such gray areas. It assumes humans are better off being controlled for the good of everyone, but it’s for the greediness of a few. And the bigger truth is that the clothing and form of those few aren’t absolute.