Minority Report (2004)

Watched 2/18/24 (Blu-Ray)

Or The Fugitive: 2054. Even down to its finale being a fancy dinner party that the hero ruins for the oh-so-close villain, I never really realized how much of the Harrison Ford/Tommy Lee Jones thriller is transposed onto this. The general plot is all there as the backbone, but then Spielberg and Frank do their thing, even going so far as to hold a three-day think-tank with leaders in various fields explaining their visions of the future. It shows in what is one of the more fully realized worlds in recent sci-fi memory. The retro futurism that is so often given an art-deco palette is instead transformed into an artificial-light-bleached goofiness, ensuring that ideas come before beauty, injecting every frame with something darkly strange and unique.

Whether it’s a buzz-cut, brown-eyed Cruise, the various side characters ripped out of everything from Raymond Chandler to Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, or supersonic spin-pistols and vomit-inducing sick sticks, there isn’t a frame of this movie that goes by without featuring something audio-visually entertaining. 

Opening with one of Spielberg’s most adult setpieces, featuring post-coital scissor-murder, the script immediately shows you its smarts with some cleverly repetitive, subtextual dialogue and Cruise’s character making a true detective play in order to save the day. We immediately like John Anderton because he’s good at his job. We get behind this buzz-cut commander of a fascist police force because he’s got a great rapport with his coworkers and knack for thinking on his feet. He’s someone you would want to work with.

The film then transitions to one of my favorite ever exposition dumps, implementing the great, difficult trick of delivering background info through propulsive plot. A heated, rat-a-tat internal affairs inquiry is the perfect plot device to learn more about pre-crime, its inner-workings, and even its philosophy. Colin Farrell as Danny Witwer is a revelation—my favorite Farrell role and one where he manages the best he ever has to toe the line between asshole and magnetic. His and Cruise’s interactions are among the film’s best, most tense moments.

After setting up Danny’s investigation and Cruise’s backstory, we jump into the fugitive story that will dominate the movie. The surveillance state and its technology that we just spent so much time learning about and ogling at is gone in a matter of seconds. Not gone but even worse—turned against us. And this is where Minority Report cements itself as an action staple with one of the most spectacular, galvanizing extended chase sequences ever put to screen.

Take the already-fascinating curtain of oversaturated light and drape it over a “mag-lev” highway scramble, the ultimate jetpack fight, and a car-factory shootout/boxing match hybrid that defies all limits of how visceral and clean action filmmaking can get. Truly some of Spielberg’s best and I marvel at it each time I see these 15 minutes.

If I had one complaint for Minority Report, it would be that it never quite reaches that high again. But between an absorbing, truly clever mystery, some oddball interactions including a can’t-look-away doctor’s office visit, and various technological super-gags that Spielberg created a AAA-tier think-tank to brainstorm, the movie certainly never reaches anything resembling a standstill. There’s always something to catch your eye or your ear, including the aforementioned career-best work from Farrell, another in a long line of great Christopher Plummer roles, some fun sci-fi weirdness from Samantha Morton and Peter Stormare, and then of course all of the intensity and vulnerability you would expect from Cruise in an action flick. A real multi-tool player of a movie.

9.5/10