Film Roar

Minority Report is decent. But I have two major problems with it: 1) out of place humor, and 2) an ending that won't quit. I searched my sent messages and found my review that I sent to a friend in Texas after I saw it. Here goes:

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Well, saw it. I was disappointed. There were a few blips here and there that were annoying leading up to the "murder" he committs. Primarily they were comic. Some of the comedy was no big deal, but things like the eyes rolling down the hall was just lame and really broke up the flow of the film. But those were just blips. The thing that really hurt the film was the way it went on and on becoming more convoluted with each extension. Lisa and Dan agreed. It really broke it's logic, too. It starts to split at the seams as the new endings needing new explanations unfold. After the "murder" of Crow, it just starts to feel like non sequiturs. I felt like Spielburg or the writer or both were trying to get to an ending they wanted, but with a beginning that didn't really give adequate set-up for that ending. You could feel many more natural endings but they didn't come. Or a new ending got slapped on to replace the more natural ending. Had it been about 10 minutes longer from the moment when Crow gets killed with a more natural ending, I would give it maybe a 1.5 or higher. Who knows. But as is, it's probably a .75 to 1 [my friend and I devised a scale from -3 to 0 to +3]. I definitely preferred Borne Identity as an action/mystery movie. I may have even preferred Star Wars [probably ep II], because at least I didn't feel like just getting the hell out of there at the end (maybe in the middle a few times). I hate bad endings. I can deal with bad middles, but endings must be decent. Did get to see the new Signs preview though.

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I agree that the cinematography is good, however. But mood is not enough when the scripts fights against that mood.

I found my friend's response and my response to him as well (excuse the grammatical mistakes aplenty):

> I felt like Spielburg or the writer or both were trying to get to an ending they wanted,
Yup. He had the same problem with AI. One ending, then another, then another.

Scott:

My biggest complaint with the film, though, is that it's just a dumb action movie set in the future. It isn't really science fiction. Spielberg doesn't have what it takes to sort through the variety of different ethical and technological issues posited in the source material. Sure, there's an occasional feeble "Is this a bad thing or a good thing" nudge to the audience. I don't think the audience needs Spielberg to tell them what the questions are. They need to see some exploration of the questions. He's just not equipped to do that, as he showed in AI--a film with loads of interesting ideas that were unexplored and unexploited.

Me:

See, I think a lot of that could be handled more effectively just by leaving the subjects alone. I think he tries to get too much into that at the end. I think the endings are essentially ways to approach stupid questions like gun control, human rights, the nature of justice, etc, etc. But the setting and the situation raise those questions inherently, I think. That's what's nice about, eg, the director's cut of Blade Runner. Even Blade Runner normal edition isn't bad because most of the commentary is just story-based. The problem is already presented. If you just show a movie with the situation, people will create the issues in their minds themselves in much more interesting ways. It's like poetry or painting. If you make the problems and messages too explicit it decreases their effectiveness. Spielburg tried to make the issues to explicit and tried to get to a conclusion that matched his '90s liberal Hollywood sensibilities. None of that was necessary. End with us thinking Crow was the killer, eg, and he kills him. Then he gets haloed. That raises all kinds of questions of justice for people to argue about and think about and you don't have to say a thing. But the more they tried to bind it up into a neat Hollywood package, explaining every little thing and moving towards an unnatural feeling happy ending, the less interesting it got. I actually like AI's ending much more. At least the ending to AI made sense along with the beginning of AI. You have this full circle being completed. I'm not saying that with the lame middle it's not too much movie, but I think if you kept the stuff with the aliens and reworked the middle and initial ending to fit the rest of the film in moodiness it could be a pretty interesting sci-fi movie.

My major gripe about the film was the when Cruise (John Anderton) was Pre-Crime's number 1 criminal. He had his eyeballs transplanted so he would not get spotted by the many retinal scanners that are all over the place. But he kept his old ones (in a polythene bag) as part of a plan to get back into the inner sanctum of Pre-Crime and nick a pre-cog. Anderton doesn't think that they would negate his security access and do you know what he was right. Hmmm.

Thank god for the plug hole made for two in the pre-cog pool for him to escape!

While I don't have any defense for the Anderton's eyeballs error, a good friend of mine noted that Gideon, the guard at the Pre-Crime "jail" says to John as he is haloed and descends into his "cell," that with a halo on, all of one's dreams come true. Then we see a shot of Anderton in his cell with the halo on, and from there we see Burgess and Anderton's wife, Burgess slips up, Anderton's wife frees him, Pre-Crime goes down, Anderton is freed, the pre-cogs are freed, he remarries his wife, and they have another child... the suggestion would be that the overextended epilogue could all be Anderton's hopeless fantasy. I personally think that this is a wonderfully subtle and meaningfully ambiguous note and saves the ending of the movie for me, since I loved everything before it but was a little frustrated by the "everything works out for all the good guys and there's no negative consequences of completely invalidating the current D.C. police system" ending.

Minority Report is an incredible piece of work on the part of everyone involved. The story is amazingly well written, the acting is flawless, the cinemotgraphy is beyond perfect, and the directing is mind-blowing. The shots you find in this movie and the realism of 2054 can't compare to any other science fiction/ film noir. I personaly love this movie and honestly, there are too many people who don't know what they like and believe that the only thing that is good is anything that goes against convention. These people inhibit creativity and hinder great directors from getting the respect they deserve. Minorty Report is one of Spielberg's best. It truly is a masterpiece.