Posted on 06/30/2002 1:23:37 PM PDT by pabianice
A life-long sci fi fan (started with "House of Mystery" and "Colonel Tommy Tomorrow" comic books), I went to a noon matinee of "Minority Report" (a benefit of being a free-lance reporter).
SPOILERS..........................
"MR" is based upon yet another short story of the late, great Philip K. Dick (who had to die before his estate could become wealthy from the rights to his work). The tale deals with a new technology that allows the police to arrest someone before they commit a murder.
In general -- nice try, but it doesn't quite come together. The CGI are so sophisticated that, in most scenes, it is not possible to tell what was filmed from what has been created through computer imaging, and the CGI is excellent. That's the good news. The bad news is that they have made a 160 minute movie out of a short story, leaving about 115 extra minutes to doodle with.
The movie is shot with a blue-gray metallic hue, perhaps to make it look "futuristic." However, the result is to make it look artificial, like an Etch-A-Sketch in color. The sound track is frequently unclear, which is especially annoying since you have to hear the dialog to have any idea of what is happening on screen.
The plot is basically Hollywood's 5th remake of "The Fugative," this time set 50 years into the future. A cop, mourning the death of his young son, is framed for murder (Tom Cruise) and runs for his life while trying to figure-out what happened and who did it to him. Supporting players are almost uniformly flat; even Max von Sydow comes across as tired and cranky instead of evil and scheming. The best sequence involve's Cruise's character having his eyes replaced by a maniac surgeon and then left to fend for himself in a filthy flop house while police robots search for him.
Technology is horribly mixed and improbable. After you are left to swallow that within the next 40 years genetic engineers will accidentally create mute clairvoyant savants that can foresee murders, you have to also choke-down police flying around with Buck Rogers rocket back-packs (very badly done, esp. for an SKG film), VTOL jet police cars, vomit-wands (colorful, non-lethal crowd control devices), guns that fire force fields to immobilize criminals, and a world-wide, error-free system of hundreds of millions of fully automated luxury cars that run not only on roads but up and down the sides of buildings, all by computer control and with no accidents (this the same month Amtrak is about to go out of business for a combination of technical and financial reasons). Product placement reminds one of "Back to the Future II," although in that movie, it was fun. In this movie, it's just marketing. VR computer technology shown in the movie is flashy and perhaps the only realistic approximation of technology likely in 2054.
The story gets ever more convoluted until I and those around me in the theater were murmuring, "What is going on? Who is that?" There is some clever plot misdirection and the finale' is ok but it isn't worth waiting two and a half hours for, especially when you know that Cruise is going to triumph. "Vanilla Sky," Cruise's recent movie, is so far superior to "MR" that the contrast is stark and disappointing.
My unsolicited, amateur rating: 3 out of 6.
Let me guess, in such a repressive society, the President is supposed to be a Republican.
The Vomit Stick is a law enforcement device that, when police are confronted with a large out-of-control crowd, they employ use of this crowd-control device - the 'vomit stick' is actually a playback system, which transmits images of Hillary Clinton into the brainwaves of the crowd... though I classify it as non-lethal, testing has not quite been successful in that regard...
I can't wait to market it. Only drawback is, it doesn't work on Leftists...
Well, its in R+D now.
1) The premise is that premeditated crimes have a 36-hour notice, while crimes of passion allow less than an hour. But the one they nail Anderton on is a crime of passion, but has a 36-hour lead time. What gives?
2) Why don't the police change the locks on their headquarters, so to (ocularly) speak? This is the one that really bothers me. The film falls apart if they deny TC retinal access.
In spite of a relatively low body count, I found it quite a violent film (it should've been rated R). In some obvious ways this is a negative; however, it does contribute (if you can call it that) to the film's "shock value."
A couple of annoying camera effects aside, I thought it was well produced, and pretty much of a gripper.
WOuld I go see it again? Maybe. But then, I always did like PKD stories. I just can't wait for the upcoming film version of "Paycheck."
Not a plot hole at all -- they were too darn busy -- and incompetent. Remember, this movie was set in Washington, DC!
1) The premise is that premeditated crimes have a 36-hour notice, while crimes of passion allow less than an hour. But the one they nail Anderton on is a crime of passion, but has a 36-hour lead time. What gives?
Yeah, this was the one major plot hole. You juar have to suspend belief on that one. (WARNING - SPOILER AHEAD!) Or else, you consider that it was entirely premediated -- from the standpoint of someone other than Anderton.
Agree 100 percent. Anti-Boy Scouts = Anti-American in my book. Steven Spewburg and Levis are still at the top of my boycott list. And I am about as hardcore a Sci-Fi fan as there is, and used to buy levis jeans exclusively.
He takes his eyes out to get into the Temple only to use his old eyes to get into the Temple.
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