A "review" of Minority Report

Released in 2002, the movie Minority Report sucked. I mean it really, really blew. But there were some quality parts I enjoy that became one of the two reasons why I've watched Minority Report, like, eight times. (Reason #2 was that I had HBO. 'nuff said.)

For those who aren't familiar with Minority Report, the basics are thus: Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise took a Philip K. Dick short story written in 1956 and decided to butcher it into a pretty-looking remake of The Fugitive.

The plot is pretty intelligent, since they kept a large amount of Dick's ideas: in the future, exactly three comatose psychics lay in a swimming pool and direct the actions of the Precrime police unit. The precognitive vegetables or "precogs" constantly dream of people being murdered. The catch? The murders haven't happened yet. A sophisticated staff of detectives record their dreams, interpret them, and move to intervene before they can commit their crime. Dick's story raises some very good philosophical questions. Can you punish someone who would have committed a crime but didn't because you stopped him? The movie at least contemplates this momentarily before switching gears and moving into the formulaic "wrongfully accused man evades authority" action pic. John Anderton (a pre-insane Tom Cruise) runs the Precrime program. He is In Charge. He Believes In What He Is Doing. Suspects who the Precogs dream about are bad people and need to be punished. No questions. Imagine his surprise when one day his name pops up as shooting a person he has never heard of before.

Now, the Right Thing To Do would be for Anderton to say "Hey, I guess the system knows me better than I know myself," and turn himself in. That would make an exceedingly boring film. Instead, Anderton goes rogue, bucking the system and asserting that he must be innocent. Here is precisely where movie and story part ways. The story is one of paranoia and intrigue, with Anderton being a middle-aged managerial type who is incredibly psychotic about people working against him. In Dick's Minority Report, Anderton goes so far over the edge as to decide that his own wife was probably implicit in setting him up. He puts together an entire conspiratorial framework in his mind of who did what, and what each individual would gain from their actions. Seriously: I think there's a tree of names labeled "Figure 1-4" in the book somewhere. Anderton isn't what I'd call a sympathetic character, but he's pretty damned clever.

Meanwhile, in Spielberg's movie, Anderton is a hunka hunka burnin' love. He's innocent, dammit, and since he has no wife to suspect, he goes running aimlessly. He runs through a freeway. And he runs through an automobile assembly plant. And he runs through a garden. And he runs through a shopping mall. At one point, I think he runs through a Gap store. He has to find The Minority Report: as he runs, he runs to the batshit-insane recluse who invented Precrime. She tells him about The Minority Report, an idea so clever it had to be left over from the work of Philip K. Dick. I told you there were three Precogs who live in a constant dream-like state of watching murders that haven't happened yet. What are the odds that all three of them would have the exact same dream? Bingo. Sometimes, one of the Precogs will have a dissenting opinion of the events to be, and this is The Minority Report. Since they've been comatose for years and years, the Precogs cannot point out a minority report, and even if they were allowed to wake up, they wouldn't have the socialization skills necessary to explain the concept. Batshit-Insane Woman explains to Anderton (who is, as I said, the Precrime Director and should have known about the existence of minority reports a hell of a long time ago) that if he wishes to prove his innocence, he needs to return to his police precinct and get one-on-one with one of the Precogs.

Spielberg decides that the minority report means he needs to make a thrilling, get in, grab the girl, and then swing out on the chandelier kind of movie. Dick made it so that Anderton calls in a few favors and gets to sift through some punch cards for awhile. Advantage: movie, simply because it's more interesting to watch. Anderton grabs the female Precog codenamed "Agatha" and they bolt. All the Precogs have names of mystery novelists, which is a nice touch. Most of the good scenes in this movie feature Agatha, who is either in a wet body suit or freaking out because of the massive influx of stimuli she's getting being tossed into the real world with a wanted fugitive. They flee to a shopping mall, where Anderton learns that it is exceedingly useful to have a psychic aiding your escape. "Find an umbrella," Agatha tells him. Anderton declines. "It's not raining and people are chasing us," he reasons. Soon he learns to trust the advice of the woman who can see into the future. He gets an umbrella.

Another one of the interesting parts of Minority Report is Spielberg's advocacy of non-lethal weapons. In the film, there are only a couple of handguns. The police force that rushes in to stop murders before they happen use an arsenal of relatively benign, albeit inventive, technology. Instead of tasers or wooden batons, they use Sick Sticks, which cause people who touch the end to vomit uncontrollably. The police use a shotgun-looking thing that knocks people down using an energy pulse, and which is "reloaded" by swinging the barrel around one full revolution. Instead of going door to door, they toss around robotic spiders, which trawl through the building doing retinal scans of the inhabitants. (If Greg Bear was going to sue over the spiders, he would have done it by now.) The police in Spielberg's Minority Report are really neat, even if he paints them as the bad guys.

In Dick's story, Anderton puts one and one and one together and finds out precisely why his name popped up as killing a complete stranger. It is a brilliant twist that I will not spoil here.

In Spielberg's movie, the twist is lame and here it is:

Anderton joined with the Precrime program partly because of the guilt of having his son kidnapped years earlier, and it turns out the stranger he was going to kill was the man who took his boy. But the man actually didn't take his boy at all. He just wants to die in order for his family to collect his life insurance policy. The mastermind behind this soap operatic plot is the father of Precrime who tapped Anderton to lead the program and who has done a little killing to protect the project from time to time.

None of this comes from the story. This is all Spielberg, baby. And it sucks. But, as I said, there were some quality parts to the film, and this hackneyed "I've been working against you the entire time" story holds one of them. Remember, this is a kindly old man who everybody loves, and in this Quality Scene he just can't seem to get his bow tie right. Anderton's ex-wife, who has learned of an old, supposedly straight-forward, and "already solved" murder case goes to see him about it.

"Here, let me help you get ready for your press conference," she says. She stands behind him and starts folding and twisting his tie for him. "I know you're busy, but there's this old crime that might prove John is innocent. Turns out that a woman was killed a whole bunch of years ago and the Precogs might have seen it happen twice, but it was dismissed as an 'echo' because so many elements were the same in both incidents."

"I'd be happy to help, my dear! Do you happen to know the name of the woman who was drowned?"

"I didn't say she drowned."

BUM-BUM-BUMMMMMMM.... This kind of foot-in-mouth scene is played out over and over again in the Encyclopedia Brown books, yet Spielberg pulls it off and makes it a great scene to watch: Ex-Wife's hands start shrinking away from Kind Old Man's tie because she's not an idiot, and all the air just gets sucked out of the room as Kind Old Man realizes he just said something stupid. If you want to sit through the whole film just to get the quality bits and pieces, you're welcome to do so.

I guarantee the ending is worse than in the story. Read it, and you'll enjoy Philip K. Dick's version so much more that you'll leave your home and run through the streets screaming, "I love Dick! I can't get enough! I crave more Dick!"