Minority Report (2002)
I hated
'Minority Report' when I first watched it 20-years ago but since everyone else on planet earth seemed to think it's one of
Steven Spielberg's greatest films, I've been very curious to re-watch it. The short answer is that I still mostly hate it, for the same reasons. Let me preface this with saying that I've never read
Philip K. Dick's short story, so maybe it made sense there but... I just can't buy that nobody in this world, not even our supposed hero, questions the logic of the "Pre-crime" concept, or only on the most infantile level.
Colin Farrell's character brings it up in one early scene, just so
Tom Cruise can swat it away with a simplistic example of a ball dropping off a table. Except that if you tell a ball
"Hey you're about to roll off that edge" it won't make any difference, which is not the case with 99.99% of humans. The first Pre-crime case we're shown seems selected to demonstrate to us the audience how insane the system is. Where a guy who clearly was about to commit a sudden crime of passion, which he would never have committed and would never commit in the future if somebody had simply sat him down and gave him a cup of tea and a few minutes to calm down. Instead were shown this terrified guy being instantly imprisoned in a coffin of living death, without a moment to question what's happening.
Nobody seems interested in investigating the crimes, if there were accomplices, or if coercion was involved. I could see the benefits of the system in eradicating only premeditated murderers, those intent on committing those crimes regardless, or I could buy the system as presented, if characters of good conscious questioned it, or if the characters were shown to accept Pre-crime's failings because of it's overwhelming benefits. But were not shown that, Cruise's character only takes issue with Pre-crime when somebody is trying to pervert it and when he's personally endangered by it. He's not even troubled by the three Precog people they are clearly torturing on a daily basis. So I can only conclude that he's a callous, selfish, possibly evil individual but the film carries on as if he's not.
When discussing it's dystopian/utopian premise,
Sylvester Stallone's 1993 action comedy
'Demolition Man' has more intellectual rigour than 'Minority Report'. I'm eternally engaged by an anti-hero super-cop like
Judge Dredd, who perpetuates a similarly repressive and indiscriminate system of law enforcement because Dredd believes in the necessity of the system, at the same time as the writing denounces it. 'Minority Report' does neither, the hero is oblivious and so is the writing. These are the kinds of thoughts that occupy my mind while watching 'Minority Report' and no amount of bubble cars, jetpacks and robo-spiders can distract my brain from it.
The solution to the mystery is extremely convoluted and hard to follow but I'm pretty sure it's b*llocks. So
Max von Sydow found a magic hobo who is prepared to take money to kill somebody (for which the magic hobo will be imprisoned forever with no use for that money) in order to cover a second killing. If we're going to be that stupid, why not have Sydow find a second magic hobo to commit the actual murder, instead of Sydow risking doing it himself? The dumb non-questioning of the premise continues right to the end, when our hero effectively brings back mass murder without a moments thought. Hurray! roll credits. By the way, was this the first film to do the super annoying transparent hand wavy computer screen thing? Reason enough to hate this film if it was.