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Tom Cruise messes with fate and the future in Minority Report |
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Cruise (Chief John Anderton), Max von Sydow
(Director Lamar Burgess), Samantha Morton (Agatha), Colin Farrell (Danny
Witwer), Neal McDonough (Detective Fletcher), Steve Harris (Jad), Patrick Kilpatrick
(Knott), Jessica Capshaw (Evanna), Lois Smith (Dr Iris Hineman), Kathryn Morris
(Lara Anderton), Peter Stormare (Dr Solomon P Eddie), Tim Blake Nelson (Gideon)
If you could see what lies ahead for you in your future
would you change it? Or would you accept what fate has clearly already decided?
It’s one of many questions that Minority
Report, Spielberg’s bulky, brainy sci-fi chase movie slash film noir,
tackles. And the answer it suggests is: everybody runs.
It’s the year 2054, and murder in the District of Columbia
is a thing of the past thanks to the Pre-Crime Division. Using three psychics,
known as “pre-cogs”, permanently hooked-up to a machine that can visualise
their visions of violent deaths and murders that will occur, the Pre-Crime team
led by Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) arrest and imprison murderers hours,
minutes and seconds before they even commit their crimes. Anderton believes
passionately in the system – but his belief is shaken when the next murderer to
be identified is none other than himself. Anderton is due to kill in a complete
stranger in 36 hours – and immediately goes on the run to work out who this man
is, why he would wish to kill him, and if there is any truth in the rumour that
the pre-cogs don’t always agree, and that the most powerful pre-cog Agatha
(Samantha Morton) can produce a “minority report”: an alternative vision that
shows a different future.
Spielberg’s film is one that mixes searching discussion on
fate, choice and destiny with the pumping, fast-moving action of a chase movie
and the gritty, hard-boiled cynicism and intrigue of a classic film-noir. He
frames all this in a brilliantly constructed, dystopian future where adverts
and government surveillance can read our eyes wherever we go and identify us
immediately (throwing personalised ads in the faces of people everywhere they
step) and, in the interests of safety, people who have technically not done
anything yet are imprisoned for life on the basis of things it has been determined
they will do.
It makes for a pretty heady cocktail, and one which will
have you questioning how much of what we decide is our choice and how much is
destiny. If Anderton knows his destiny, can he change his fate? Will he have
the willpower or the ability to avert his destiny? Or does knowing what will
happen and where it will take place only drive him towards his fate? Put
simply, does knowing the future in advance give you a chance to change or it or
does it make that future even more likely (or perhaps even inevitable)?
Spielberg’s film delves intelligently into these questions, throwing paradoxes
and causality loops at the viewer with a genuine lightness of touch.
This works because the film balances these more
philosophical questions with plenty of adventure and excitement. Several chase
sequences – which make imaginative use of various pieces of future tech like
driverless cars and jet packs – keep you on the edge of your seat. Spielberg
tentpoles the film throughout with some brilliant set pieces, from Alderton’s
race against the clock to stop a killer at the start to his own escape from the
clutches of his former colleagues.
These set pieces also differ in styles. These more
conventional action sequences are sandwiched between others that are a mix of
darkness, comedy, horror and slapstick. In one sequence, Alderton must attempt
to hide in a bath of icy water (Cruise holding his breath of course for a
prolonged period on camera) to evade a series of body-heat seeking metallic
spiders, with Alderton desperate to protect his freshly replaced eyes from
being exposed too soon to daylight. Later, Alderton will evade the cops thanks
to the advice of pre-cog Agatha whose simple instructions (Grab an umbrella!
Stand still for five seconds behind the balloons! Drop coins for the tramp!)
wittily use her fore-knowledge of events to guide Alderton through a gauntlet
of perils.
The horror is in there as well from those creepy spiders,
not to mention the ickyness of Cruise carrying out an operation to replace his
eyes to evade that all-intrusive retinal scanning. The sequence – with Peter
Storemare as a sinister doctor who delights in leaving unpleasant tricks for
the temporarily blinded Alderton (rotten food and sour milk being the most gross)
– is a brilliantly vile, uncomfortable piece of kooky surrealism in the middle
of a wild chase. And also tees up the bizarre dark comedy of Cruise –
attempting to use his old eyes to break back into his former office – dropping
his eyes and desperately chasing them as they roll down a corridor towards a
drain.
There are also darker themes in Alderton’s tragic
background. Saddled with a drug addiction and a broken home, we learn Alderton
is still struggling with the grief of losing a son to kidnappers – a loss he
clearly holds himself personally responsible for. Getting tanked up at home and
interacting with old home movies of his lost son, Alderton carries within a
deep sadness and grief. It’s a challenge that Cruise rises to really well, his
ability to bring commitment and depth to pulpy characters perfect for making
Alderton a character you really invest in.
It also gives Alderton the tragic backstory and
self-destructive problems so beloved of grimy, gumshoe cops of old noir films.
That’s certainly also the inspiration for the drained out, greying look of the
film that Spielberg shoots, with colours bleached and the future looking a
confusing mix of clean, sleek machines and dirty, rain sodden streets.
Alderton’s hunting down of his future victim has all the shoe leather and
bitterness of classic Chandler. Meanwhile Federal Agent Witwer (a decent
performance from Colin Farrell) chases him down with the determination of an
obsessed cop, while also showing more than a few of the quirks of the maverick
PI himself.
Minority Report is
so good in so many places, it’s a shame that the final act so flies off the
rails from the tone of what we have seen before, eventually stapling a happy
ending onto a film that tonally has been building towards something very
different. On a re-watch, there is just enough in the film to allow you to
interpret this ending as a sort of fantasy or dream, but you’ll want the film
to end the first time it crashes to black (you’ll know the point I mean). I
prefer to believe the ending is a sort of dream – although Spielberg drops no
hints to this effect in the film visually at all, in the way something like Inception does so well, to leave you
questioning reality – because with that thought that final act betrays
everything you have seen before in its simplicity and embracing of binary
rights and wrongs.
But with that massive caveat, Minority Report is a very impressive film – and for at least the
first hour and fifty minutes probably one of Spielberg’s best. It gets lost in
the final act – and I know I said this but please
let that be a fantasy – but until then this is a brilliant mix of genres and
intelligence and Hollywood thrills with Cruise at his best. It’s exciting and
its emotionally involving. Ignore that ending and it’s great. When you re-watch
it, pretend you can’t see that future.
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