June 26, 2002
Movie Review: Minority Report (Spielberg) (Spoilers!)
Exactly what I expected - a technically well-made movie, with lots of interesting ideas about future tech, all supporting a weak, cliche story that goes on too long to try to give us a "happy ending". Thanks again, Mr. Spielberg, for not trying to challenge the audience. And thanks for the gratuitous use of slow zooms and oversaturated lighting, along with mindless emotional music swells to denote important scenes. No need for subtlety here!
Click the permalink to read the rest of my spoiler-filled ranting.
First, I should give credit for the nice work put into the design of a lot of the technology. Almost all of it was really well done, and not too much was overexplained, instead it blended nicely into a believable near-future world. However, it seems like a little more thought could have been put into the mechanics of the Precrime system. There were enough problems that I thought of as the movie was going that it prevented me from really paying attention to the storyline at times, but maybe that was an OK thing since the story was pretty predictable. Overly-evil federal agent was actually just doing his job? Kindly old man is the actual bad guy? What a shock!
First up, once they determine the abilities of these precogs and the reliability of them, it is surprising to me they were used for local policework and not immediately drafted into national security. Maybe that was some kind of political jurisdiction game that was part of the federal government interest in them, but it seems like they would have been extremely effective overseeing a battle. In any case, I can go along with this idea, but it makes me feel like this is a little unrealistic, or at least deserved to be touched on in some fashion.
But if you are going to start building a huge infrastructure based on the abilities of these three individuals, how could you not have plans for what to do once they die or lose their abilities or are no longer available for service? It seems like they would have been doing anything possible to create more precogs to be able to expand or stabilize the program. It also seems like a legal decision on the rights of the precogs would be an early thing to have happen, to prevent exactly the situation that occurred with the mother of the female precog. It does not seem a stretch to think that the government would find a way to conscript people whose abilities would be able to save so many people. And even if they had not done that up front, it seems like they would have legions of lawyers ready to fight any challenge to the custody - and why a police officer who felt it was so important to stop murders would resort to murder so quickly seems silly to me. And what did they expect to happen once the precogs (or even just one of them) died? People would be so used to not murdering it would never start again?
I know they tried to show the legal aspect of using the precogs by having the witnesses and the judge incolved, but I didn't buy why the "minority reports" and "echoes" were ignored. The woman doctor who "invented" the system could have easily discussed these items with the legal establishment that was figuring out how to incorporate this into the justice system. Why not only stop crimes where all three precogs agree? And doesn't this force a discussion of probability in the matter, since crimes where all three agreed were more likely to happen? And once we introduce probability of possible futures, incarcerating all of the people as if they had committed the crimes seems harsh. Especially with the crimes of passion, why not stop the crime and try some form of rehabilitation? Or some kind of assisted-living? Although it is probably not fair to argue the metaphysics a movie is based on, and this seemed to be firmly in a free will camp with no acknowledgement of probability. As for the echoes, it seems like a more formal analysis of whether something was an echo would occur, including a timestamp check, and in any case, all output of the precogs should have been recorded. That would have made an echo-murder much less likely.
I had a little problem with the precogs only being able to see murders, especially with the cheesy explanation one of the characters offered for it. I could dismiss that as just being that character's opinion - but then we learn the precogs out in the world were able to see other things in the future, which makes me question the consistency of the story.
And I was frustrated by the ending where the precogs live in the house reading books. Didn't they feel any guilt about not trying to help people in some way? Didn't they want to offer their services part time? If you could save lives in that direct a manner it seems like you should feel a little more obligated to do it. I guess this could be explained away through their upbringing or their harsh treatment earlier, but it bothered me.
Of course, the movie really should have ended when Tom Cruise's character was able to not murder the person at the time specified by the precogs. This would have left us with the "you have a choice" message and an understanding that the precog system would have to be stopped. Having to go through all those extra scenes of explanation at the end was a chore, and made the movie feel much less thoughtful. I guess I find it unbelievable that similar situations hadn't ever occured - not with the actual knowledge of the situation ahead of time, but it seems like the Precrime team would not have been able to find the location for a reasonable percentage of the crimes, and of those a few would not have happened and maybe most would have. Wouldn't that have invalidated the Precrime system, according to the end-scene logic?
I guess this all would have been more interesting to me if I didn't feel like I already struggle with the idea of free will when I think about how the universe works. But I do feel like a movie with this much budget and this many people working on it, that is clearly aspiring to be something above a "typical summer action movie" should have put a little more thought into these things.
Oh well.
Posted by babar at June 26, 2002 07:32 PM