Movie Reviews

Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is one of the more original and imaginative sci-fi movies I've seen. The premise itself is pretty cool, too: a new method of policing has been developed that harnesses the ability of three genetically-altered humans to 'psychically' see a murder, before it actually happens. A SWAT-like group headed by John Anderton (Tom Cruise) then races to arrest the perpetrator before he/she has even committed the murder.

Stemming from this premise are some interesting moral questions. Was it morally acceptable, for instance, to genetically alter the Pre-Cogs (the three psychics) to allow them to predict the murders? Is it morally acceptable to imprison someone for something they haven't actually done? I suppose a truly interesting movie could be made about these very matters, but although Spielberg does touch on them briefly, they're not the focus of the story. I think that's probably for the best, though, because the film exists primarily as a thoroughly entertaining (though also very smart) action-adventure.

One of my favourite things about Minority Report is the look of it. In terms of actual settings, Spielberg's created one of the more plausable-looking futuristic worlds I can think of -- a really neat mixture of incredibly-high technology alongside such "old fashioned" things as Victorian houses and police on horseback. Spielberg also carries over the same sort of film-stock look that he used on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (and to a lesser extent on Catch Me If You Can), which involves high-contrast lighting and a very 'grainy' look, which both help to make the CG effects seem much more natural and realistic looking than in many other effects-driven films.

I've never really thought of Spielberg as one of the 'great' directors of our time, but there's no doubt that he really is an inventive and original filmmaker, and the three films he's released in the last two years are proof of that.