Movies - Minority Report

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	Movies - Minority Report

Minority Report is a 2002 film by Steven Spielberg starring Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Samantha Morton, Kathryn Morris, and Colin Farrell. It is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name.

Minority Report is one of several movies based on stories by Philip K. Dick. The film renders a much more detailed view of a near-term future world than that present in the original short story, with depictions of a number of technologies related to the movie's themes. The film also omits certain story details (no punch cards for example).

Style

From the stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles A.I. more than E.T.. This is probably not coincidental since Spielberg began the project after finishing A.I. The film has a distinct blue sheen which gives the picture a bleaker look. Like A.I, Minority Report is among Spielberg's darker films.

Minority Report is first and foremost a science fiction film. However, like Blade Runner and Dark City it mixes in elements of a number of different genres, particularly film noir, mystery, thriller and action / adventure. People have also noted resemblances to Brian De Palma's The Fury.

Plot

Minority Report is set in Washington, DC during the year 2054. Thanks to three "precogs" and technology built around their ability to see murders before they happen, the city has gone six years without a homicide. The group making use of the precogs is called the "Department of Pre-Crime"; the police officers and detectives within the department are empowered to act on their foreknowledge, arresting people who are about to commit a murder, and imprisoning them without a trial in a "Hall of Containment" using technology even crueler than that used to make use of the precogs. The department chief John Anderton is played by Cruise, with von Sydow playing his boss Lamar Burgess. Morton plays the senior precog, nicknamed Agatha (after Agatha Christie; the nicknames of the other two, Dashiell and Arthur, are also references to the themes of the film).

The country is about to vote on expanding the Pre-Crime program nationally, which brings in the Department of Justice. Farrell plays an observer from that department, Danny Witwer, whose concerns about Pre-Crime could be motivated as much by a desire to advance his own career as from doubt about the constitutionality and absolute certainty of the Pre-Crime process and the people who run it.

The title of the movie refers to a discovery Anderton makes about the precogs: they don't always agree about the future. Since there are three precogs, the "Minority Report" refers to the dissenting opinion, which the process filters out in order to preserve the sense of certainty that Burgess in particular believes is required for the program's success.

Anderton's discovery of the existence of minority reports is one of several clues to the mystery which drives most of the film. It also contributes to the desperation felt by the chief when in the flash of an eye (more literally, the drop of a wooden ball), he goes from being a pre-crime cop to a pre-crime perpetrator, the action which drives the plot. He learns that he is supposed to kill someone he's never met, and eventually discovers a conspiracy involving the pre-cogs, an old friend, and the disappearance (six years before) of his little boy.

Themes

Fate vs. Choice

The first and most obvious theme is whether individuals are dominated by fate or whether they have free will. In the opening sequence, the Pre-Crime division led by Anderton receive a pre-vision that tells them that a man would murder his adulterous wife and her lover upon discovery. While the crime is averted, the man claims that he wouldn't have killed them, but he is arrested and imprisoned nevertheless. It is never revealed whether or not he would have committed the murders. Similarly John Anderton sees a pre-vision that states he would kill a man named Leo Crow, a person he had never met, a situation he finds absurd. Yet, as the movie progresses, his decision to escape justice, his belief in his own innocence and his search for the Minority Report (essentially a MacGuffin) generates the incident in the first place.

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Movies - Minority Report

Style

Plot

Themes

Fate vs. Choice

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