Minority Report

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

A happy surprise: a timely antidote to the comic-book mindlessness of "Spider-Man" and repetitive space fantasy of "Star Wars," and an encouraging bid from the top of the A-list to once again reach very high and spit in the face of the gutless formula filmmaking that rules Hollywood.

Ferociously intense, furiously kinetic, it’s expressionist film noir science fiction that, like all good sci-fi, peers into the future to shed light on the present.

Spielberg's dark side may not be where everyone wants to live, but it's somehow encouraging to know that he has one.

Cruise will never be a master thespian, but there's no one better at putting across the charisma of control, and the opening sequence of ''Report'' is an astonishingly fluid demonstration of his gifts.

Whose idea was it to turn Minority Report into a mushy declaration of humanism? It ends up as less of a warning about an Orwellian police state than a protest that Pre-Cogs are people, too. It's Dick-less.

Miscast, misguided, and often nonsensical, Minority Report is nevertheless the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg has made in the decade since "Jurassic Park."

Minority opinions must also be respected...................................

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Steven Spielberg tackles a customarily big-brained Philip K. **** concept, discarding most of the novella’s story beats while retaining its core premise and tricky moral dilemmas. Set half a century in the future, Spielberg’s forecast depicts an America that’s more advanced, more heavily reliant upon its technology, but still socially familiar. The key talking point is pre-crime, an ethically dubious predictive technique that’s been employed by law enforcement to completely eliminate homicide in Washington DC, but the stage is sprinkled with all manner of cute, interesting and downright prescient bits of dreamy theoretical hardware. Nobody bats a thousand with this stuff, and while PD jetpacks and nausea-inducing cattle prods haven’t yet entered the the market, the film’s anticipation of self-driving electric cars seems on track and its widespread use of draggable touch screen interfaces predate iOS by a full three years. So, as a practical forecast / demo reel for smart, life-enhancing tech, Minority Report is a real wonderland. As a narrative, it’s frequently hamstrung by jerky pacing, significant plot holes and long-winded exposition. When high profile pre-crime detective Tom Cruise is framed by his own system, he goes on the lam in search of answers. That quest carries him to the doorstep of the retired geneticist who developed the prognostic network, and there we’re subjected to an obscenely fast-paced crash course on the concept’s ins and outs. In that five minute sequence, I don’t think she pauses for more than half a breath, brain dumping a hefty pile of dry elaboration as if she were reciting from a technical manual. Were that the only example, I might have raised an eyebrow, shrugged and moved on. Instead, it’s the first of many such brake-screeching halts, convenient excuses to drone on about ideas that would have been better-served by practical examples. Man, does this film know how to belabor its points. When their course is cleared, Spielberg and Cruise can be trusted to deliver some stirring slices of action and suspense. A fiery fight scene in the guts of an automated assembly plant, for example. A modified elevator escape on the edge of a towering residential complex. Recovering from a painful eye transplant to avoid detection by the vast network of face scanners (another bit of prophecy that now seems uncomfortably precise), Cruise fights detection in a losing battle that keeps us teetering on the edge of our seats. It’s all proficiently done, leveraging a wealth of dazzling sci-fi concepts into a string of thoughtful, exciting blockbuster scenes. Another of Minority Report’s strengths is its distrust of reckless advancement; constant reminders that (to paraphrase another Spielberg hit) just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. The storyline hinges on this point, both in the projected infallibility of the pre-crime apparatus and in the misuse of the three drugged, unwillingly captive “precogs” that power the whole system. These points are the film’s lifeblood, but too often they’re overshadowed by an excessively twisty narrative and a weird tendency to spell everything out. I loved this in theaters, wowed by all the big ideas and gray morality. Revisiting it now, two decades later, I was more impressed by its window dressings than by its cinematic execution. The story has a lot of oomph, but the script is wordy and overwrought, the special effects have seams showing and the third act drags on forever. Still good, but no longer great, this one’s best remembered for its high-minded speculative work than its dramatic chops.

I've seen Veggie tales episodes more engaging than this 2 hour long advertisement.

"Everybody Runs". Yeah, away from the damn cinema screen. A convoluted, contrived, predictable and uninteresting mess. The concepts that this movie uses are such an assault on common intelligence. If this movie were a person, it would kick you in the balls, steal your wallet, wave it in your face and then try and advertise itself to you that you just had a good time sitting through it.