Steven Spielberg has made movies that are meant to be realistic dramas, e.g., SCHINDLER'S LIST, and also movies that are meant to be comic-book entertainments, e.g., RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. In MINORITY REPORT he tries to incorporate both styles into a single narrative, which the audience at the Pavilions didn’t seem to mind at all. For the first 40 minutes or so the film is reasonably realistic, reasonably believable, and the presentation of the science fiction ideas and their philosophical implications (determinism vs. free will) is more intelligent than what you usually get in SF flicks. But then comes a lengthy and completely unreal chase scene involving ever more preposterous action sequences interspersed with visual jokes.

Thereafter MINORITY REPORT stays primarily in comic-book-entertainment mode with occasional brief returns to realistic-drama mode. Spielberg is clever, so the transitions back and forth between these modes are smooth, not jarring, but that doesn’t change the fact that the two modes are basically incompatible. Nonetheless, if you’re into comic-book grotesqueries, you’ll enjoy the ultra-creepy eye-transplant doctor and his Naziesque nurse, the acid-tongued genius inventor of Precrime with her greenhouse full of carnivorous plants, the police search robots that look like spiders, the spooky prison warden who plays organ music to entertain a huge roomful of convicted premurderers confined in suspended animation, and Max von Sydow as Tom Cruise’s oily, malevolent boss. But Cruise himself is a disaster. He perfect-postures his way through the movie like a male fashion model striding down a runway, and his attempts to show grief reminded me of what you might expect from the lead actor in an eighth-grade all-school play.

The cinematographer has given the future a grainy, monochromatic look that I found quite appealing, and all the special effects and little details of advanced technology are done with expertise. We expect this from Spielberg, but we shouldn’t take it for granted, and he deserves credit every time he outslicks the competition. But slickness is a superficial virtue, and MINORITY REPORT is a mixed bag at best, a hodgepodge that doesn’t hold up under critical scrutiny.

My rating on the Watson scale: 3

Minority Report
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