Let's pretend the over-explanatory conclusion of "Minority Report" doesn't exist. That way, I can tell you the latest Steven Spielberg movie featuring Tom Cruise (or is it the latest Tom Cruise picture featuring Steven Spielberg?) is the very model of a summer sci-fi thriller.
It's a mystery -- as in, who's the dark presence behind all this? -- but it's not too difficult to figure out. It has an incredibly sleek look, in terms of cinematography, editing and production design. And there's just enough of that Philip K. Dick feel (his short story inspired the screenplay) to lend artistic class (but don't worry, multiplex denizens, not too much) to the story.
Of course, it has the high-dollar presence of Mr. Cruise, whose intensity and muscle definition should inspire theater lines at least until the next blockbuster action adventure hits the theaters.
The movie's set in Washington in 2054, a futuristic metropolis where the elite Pre-Crime unit has been operating for six years. Under the control of the soft-spoken Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow), the unit is a fascinating composite of classic and cutting edge.
Its sophisticated techno-lab is informed by a 21st-century-style Oracle at Delphi, an immersion tank where three psychics, known as Pre-Cogs, lie in a liquid suspension chamber, their brains (and all their visions) hot-wired to the mainframe. Chief John Anderton (Cruise) and a SWAT team of airborne detectives use this Pre-Cog intelligence to bust would-be killers before they commit their murders.
In most cases, would-be murderers are arrested before they even know they're about to take a life. The Pre-meditated homicide has abated because of this preventive technology, but murders of passion continue.
Anderton, who processes the hologram-like data with the same swagger a certain bartender named Brian Flanagan displayed in 1988's "Cocktail," is on top of his game. Or so it seems. But when his Pre-Cog imagery shows him shooting someone dead in the near future, he becomes an instant fugitive.
Chased by his own unit and Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell, a Fed who has taken over the investigation), Anderton reaches out to his sympathetic boss Burgess (I can't quite refer to the Swedish-born von Sydow as "Lamar"), his estranged wife (Kathryn Morris) and Agatha (Samantha Morton), a sort of Joan-of-Arc psychic with a mystical, divine look in her eyes.
With the usual gifted team at his disposal -- including composer John Williams, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn and costume designer Deborah L. Scott -- Spielberg takes assured control.
In his hands, "Minority Report" is a classy, chilly quasi-Hitchcockian affair. There's at least one nod to "Rear Window," as an overhead camera pans across a building of open-view apartments showing its motley residents undergoing involuntary retina inspections by some scary metallic spiders. And at times, Williams's score seems to reference Hitchcock's favorite composer, Bernard Herrmann.
Everyone's too busy shooting, firing, running away or cajoling someone for information to get down and act. But that's another key component of the summer sci-fi thriller. Sudden death, spectacular escapes and special effects (well integrated here) are the attractions. Acting isn't part of the fast-moving deal. After all, the world's in big trouble. And it's going to take dedication and muscle definition, not Shakespearean heft, to save it.
"Minority Report" is now playing in English at the America Cinema and in Russian at several local theaters.
It's a mystery -- as in, who's the dark presence behind all this? -- but it's not too difficult to figure out. It has an incredibly sleek look, in terms of cinematography, editing and production design. And there's just enough of that Philip K. Dick feel (his short story inspired the screenplay) to lend artistic class (but don't worry, multiplex denizens, not too much) to the story.
Of course, it has the high-dollar presence of Mr. Cruise, whose intensity and muscle definition should inspire theater lines at least until the next blockbuster action adventure hits the theaters.
The movie's set in Washington in 2054, a futuristic metropolis where the elite Pre-Crime unit has been operating for six years. Under the control of the soft-spoken Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow), the unit is a fascinating composite of classic and cutting edge.
Its sophisticated techno-lab is informed by a 21st-century-style Oracle at Delphi, an immersion tank where three psychics, known as Pre-Cogs, lie in a liquid suspension chamber, their brains (and all their visions) hot-wired to the mainframe. Chief John Anderton (Cruise) and a SWAT team of airborne detectives use this Pre-Cog intelligence to bust would-be killers before they commit their murders.
In most cases, would-be murderers are arrested before they even know they're about to take a life. The Pre-meditated homicide has abated because of this preventive technology, but murders of passion continue.
Anderton, who processes the hologram-like data with the same swagger a certain bartender named Brian Flanagan displayed in 1988's "Cocktail," is on top of his game. Or so it seems. But when his Pre-Cog imagery shows him shooting someone dead in the near future, he becomes an instant fugitive.
Chased by his own unit and Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell, a Fed who has taken over the investigation), Anderton reaches out to his sympathetic boss Burgess (I can't quite refer to the Swedish-born von Sydow as "Lamar"), his estranged wife (Kathryn Morris) and Agatha (Samantha Morton), a sort of Joan-of-Arc psychic with a mystical, divine look in her eyes.
With the usual gifted team at his disposal -- including composer John Williams, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn and costume designer Deborah L. Scott -- Spielberg takes assured control.
In his hands, "Minority Report" is a classy, chilly quasi-Hitchcockian affair. There's at least one nod to "Rear Window," as an overhead camera pans across a building of open-view apartments showing its motley residents undergoing involuntary retina inspections by some scary metallic spiders. And at times, Williams's score seems to reference Hitchcock's favorite composer, Bernard Herrmann.
Everyone's too busy shooting, firing, running away or cajoling someone for information to get down and act. But that's another key component of the summer sci-fi thriller. Sudden death, spectacular escapes and special effects (well integrated here) are the attractions. Acting isn't part of the fast-moving deal. After all, the world's in big trouble. And it's going to take dedication and muscle definition, not Shakespearean heft, to save it.
"Minority Report" is now playing in English at the America Cinema and in Russian at several local theaters.
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