"Minority Report" is set in the not-so-distant future of 2054 and, according to the film, the human race has been awfully busy. So here is what's up for the next 52 years: cars that climb walls, computers that you operate by acting like Mickey Mouse waving his wand in "Fantasia," personal jet packs (it's about bloody time), mechanical spiders in the floors and some new drug that causes crack babies to see into the future.
But not all is well in the land of eye scans and holograms. The "pre-cogs," a trio of oracles that are more reliable than Miss Cleo but lack her keen sense of fashion (they lay in what looks like a puddle of milk all day and have no hair), provide supercop John Anderton (Tom Cruise) and his fellow officers with images of when, by whom and to whom murders will be soon committed. The "Precrime" police then jet off armed with pulse guns, a paralysis crown and the law on their side to arrest a hapless souls before they can even do the dirty deed.
Anderton has put his faith into the Precrime system. Years before the film takes place, his son was snatched away from right in front of him, and he hasn't seen his little boy since. The cop sees his job as the way he can come to terms with his loss and prevent tragedies from happening to other people.
Unfortunately for him, he ends up being pinned as the next murderer and has to prove the system wrong while on the run. He must wait and see if he has a choice in the matter of murder. Oh, the beautiful, predictable irony.
Despite a load of potential, a rather cool story line and some wicked "Matrix"-based fight scenes, "Minority Report" ends up feeling like the first few moments of a roller coaster. At first there is a lot of buildup, tension and excitement, then you scream through some amazing parts while your initial speed is still kickin' only to end up feeling disappointed by the last little bit and forgetting why you were ever excited in the first place. Yeah, just like that.
It almost seems as if the producers of "Minority Report" were having trouble picking a genre. The first part of the film is an interesting sci-fi thriller, and the middle section consists of some wildly entertaining action. But the last act just trails off, leaving the viewer feeling dirty and confused. Maybe it's not so much like a roller coaster as like one's first sexual experience.
Regardless of the analogy that best fits the film, the end of the story seems convoluted and forced. Cruise ends up saving the world, the pre-cogs, morality and his marriage in some weird way that ends up revolving around a dangling eyeball.
Without the ending, the film is an intense thriller with some cool special effects and a trippy plot. Maybe the makers cast Cruise with a different script and when they realized he was incapable of difficult acting stunts, like showing emotion, they switched gears and said, "Hey, let's just have him do drugs and shoot things."
So in the next 52 years, buy a pulse gun, don't piss off a pre-cog and pray that someone doesn't invent a way to find out whether you're going to commit a crime before the possibility even edges its way into your mind.
