Minority Report

It's 3:42AM and I just got back from seeing Minority Report. Earlier this evening I cut a pair of Old Navy cargo pants down to shorts (they were never quite right as pants). I cut them a little crooked by accident. That was the main event of my Friday night. Then I headed down the street to the Court Street Theater and caught a 1AM show. Along the way I picked up a couple beers and put one in each pocket of my new crooked cargo shorts.

I really didn't know what to expect from this movie. I tried to do a media blockout as much as possible. I know it was all in the future and it starred Superstar Tom Cruise as a supercop or whatever. And it was like all sci-fied. 

The movie is based in 2054 and the whole thing is all futurizized out. I'm found it difficult to believe that things would look SO different in 2054. There were cars going up the sides of buildings and stuff. Ultra-mega super wow-wow computers and different architecture everywhere. I realize it's just a movie but the whole thing would have been so much more realistic if it was 2154 and not 2054. I mean please... when are they going to start construction on the new superhighways that go up the sides of buildings? They better start now if they want to get it done by 2054.

Anyway, the movie stars Superstar Tom Cruise. I've always liked Superstar Tom Cruise and almost never take issue with him as an actor. Superstar Tom Cruise is one of those superstars that never distracts me in movies by his superstardom. He just immediately falls into the role he's playing. Someone like Nic Cage is all distracting cause half the time during the movie you're like, 'That's Nicholas Cage. That's Nicholas Cage.' But Superstar Tom Cruise is cool in my book.

In this flick he plays this cop that deals with 'pre-crime.' These cops can see if someone is going to commit a crime and stop it before it happens. They connected up this psychic hotline to these 'pre-cog' humans that float around in this pool and see glimpses of murders that haven't happened yet. Long story how they got to be all psychic and very whatever. The computers the cops use look like fun but seem kinda of tiring cause they're so physical. If we are going to be so advanced by 2054 you'd think we'd avoid having to wave our arms around to make a computer work. Then Superstar Tom Cruise checks out the pre-cogs latest vision and sees that he commits a murder himself. He's like, 'Uh-oh.' The cops chase him around while he tries to put all the pieces in place.

I liked this movie but I didn't love it. I don't think it's lovable. But this movie had alot of cool stuff and is solid. Some of the special effects were impressive. The chick (Samantha Morton) who played the pre-cog was most excellent and she scared me a couple times. But when push came to shove this is a high-end detective movie with future junk thrown into it. Very cool future junk with the retinal scans and weirdo advertising (although the branding throughout was a bit heavy handed. Lexus, Nokia, Pepsi, Amex. The gang's all there.).  This is Spielberg's second attempt at a future flick. The first was that disaster A.I. that I tried to watch again recently but couldn't even get through it. Sucked. And this movie was definitely way better than that clunker. It's kind of weird that Spielberg would go back-to-back on futurizized movies and Superstar Tom Cruise would go back-to-back on 'future guy trying to sort stuff out' like in Vanilla Sky. But whatever.

Three Good Things About This Movie

-It had these cool creepy robot spiders. And groovy future gizmos and junk.
-Good solid acting throughout which was cool.
-It had some things that were genuinely very funny. (Look for the 'raid the fridge' scene.)

Three Bad Things About This Movie

-20 minutes too long.
-During one fight scene the music was distracting and bad with the loud horns and crap.
-The plot held together but it felt sort of hammered together- not really clicked together naturally.

All in all it was a good flick and one that I'll look forward to seeing when it's out on video. It's a likable movie. Is it the best thing ever made? No. Is it lovable? No. Does it have cool geeky stuff? Yes. Is it just a cop movie at heart? Yes. But in terms of futurizized cop movies, 'Robocop' (which was similar in alot of ways plot-wise) still stands at the top of my list. I loved that movie.