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Minority Report is Steven Spielberg's 20th film. It was released in 2002, and is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story "The Minority Report". It stars Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Kathryn Morris, and Max von Sydow. It is one of several movies based on stories by Philip K. Dick. The film cost more than $100 million to make, though it made more than three times that in worldwide box office, and sold at least four million copies in its first few months of release on DVD. It earned four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. It also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing.
Style 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). From the stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles A.I., (its immediate Spielberg-directed predecessor) more than the much earlier E.T.. The picture was deliberately overlit, and in post-production film development, the film negative was bleach-bypassed. This gave the film a distinctive look, with colors severely desaturated, almost to the point where the movie looked like a black-and-white film, yet the blacks and shadows had an extraordinary contrast, looking almost like a film noir picture. This distinctive look is the first major stylistic shift in science fiction films since Blade Runner and the "used future" look of Aliens, and has subsequently influenced cinematography and production design in the same way that those earlier pictures influenced the look of the science fiction movies of the '80s and '90s. Minority Report is a science fiction film which, like Blade Runner and Dark City, mixes in elements of several genres, particularly film noir, mystery, thriller and action / adventure. Synopsis Minority Report is set in Washington, D.C. 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 more cruel 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 crime fiction authors). The film opens as Anderton and his team are in the midst of tracking down and apprehending a middle class husband/father who has been tagged by the Pre-cogs for murdering his wife and her lover - an event to take place 20 minutes after the Pre-cogs alert the team. In this sequence, it is revealed that the Pre-cogs only relate the time/date of the murder, the murderer's name (in this case Howard Marks), and the victim's name (in this case Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin). All other facts of the crime can only be ascertained by clues given by the various images relayed around the time of murder. Images transfer from the Pre-cogs' minds to a computer display, and then Anderton manipulates the images in a sort of virtual reality interface to better determine how the murders might or will happen. The country is about to vote on expanding the Pre-Crime program nationally, which brings in the Department of Justice. Colin 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. Witwer learns about the system during the 20 minutes that Anderton tries to figure out the location of the pending murder. After Anderton's team does successfully apprehend Marks, we skip to the end of the day, in a section of D.C. known as the Sprawl. He is jogging on a street when he is called to a dark alley. Anderton meets a strange man (named Lycon) who ends up selling him dope. Anderton then takes a modern transport to his apartment in one of the many high-rises that encompass D.C. in 2054. Within his apartment, Anderton watches home movies of his six-year old son. It becomes evident that he lost his son, and that he is now divorced. The next morning, we meet Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow), who is the Director of Pre-crime and Anderton's boss. Burgess warns Anderton to watch Danny Witwer closely, since Witwer and the Department of Justice may be out to take over Pre-crime. Later, Witwer lectures the pre-crime team about the controversy surrounding arresting individuals who have not broken any laws, since the arrest occurs before the crime is allegedly committed. Witwer is also given a tour of the Pre-cogs' chamber, which the team calls the temple. The Pre-cogs are seen floating in a translucent substance, which a technician named Wally explains helps enhance the images that the Pre-cogs produce. After everyone leaves, Anderton stays behind to look more closely at the three Pre-cogs. Suddenly, the Pre-cog Agatha emerges from the pool and grabs Anderton's arm, asking "Can you see?" Anderton looks up at the ceiling and sees images of a woman being strangled and drowned in a lake by a man in a mask and London Fog overcoat. Intrigued by a murder which he's never seen in the six years he's worked at Pre-crime, Anderton decides to investigate. Anderton first visits the Department of Containment, where all "tagged" precriminals are kept. He explains to the main guard that he's looking for information regarding a drowning. Since there have been only a handful, the search does not take long. He is shown the images that match what Agatha showed him - a woman named Ann Lively was murdered, but the criminal was never tagged officially. It is also revealed that even though Art and Dash's images are on record, Agatha's recorded images are missing. As Anderton coerces the guard to provide him with copies of the recorded images, the guard warns, "Careful chief. You dig up the past, all you get is dirty." Anderton immediately takes news of this missing report to Burgess. Burgess conveys that he’s concerned about Anderton’s lack of sleep in light of all that’s going on. Anderton reassures him that he’s fine. Back at the Precrime offices, Anderton finds a new case unfolding. A murder is to take place in 36 hours in an apartment in the city. The victim’s name is revealed as Leo Crow. The murderer’s name is eventually revealed to be Anderton himself. Believing that he’s been set up since he doesn’t know the victim, Anderton takes it on the lam. He manages to escape Witwer and a team of Pre-crime cops in a Lexus factory and seeks refuge in the country home of a woman named Iris Hindeman, who was one of the pioneers of Pre-crime. Hindeman explains that the precogs were actually the children of drug addicts, given the gift (but as she put it, to the children it was just one big cosmic joke) to see murders prior to their actual commitment. She tells Anderson that it may be possible that he can prove his innocence if he can “download” Agatha’s direct image stream since it may be that she has seen a different event unfold; in other words not all Pre-cogs agree in their opinions about the future. This dissenting opinion of a future event is known as a minority report. Sneaking anywhere undetected is difficult in the year 2054, since everyone is automatically eye-scanned from place to place at all times. Therefore, before proceeding with his quest to obtain his minority report, Anderton visits a shady doctor that he once arrested, to replace his existing eyes with someone else’s so he can pass through eye scans without being detected. While he recovers from this advanced surgery, he dreams of his son. We learn that Anderton was at a public pool in Baltimore with his son. While Anderton was underwater, temporarily not watching his son, he was kidnapped. He awakens from this dream to discover that his Pre-crime team is in the building where Anderton is recovering. The team dispatches "spyders," robotic eye scanners, to the various rooms to find and ID Anderton. Anderton hides in a tub of ice water to avoid detection. However, the almost inaudible sound of an air bubble popping is enough to alert the spyders to his location, so his eye is scanned. Luckily, the surgery was a success and he is not identified as John Anderton. Later, he manages to reach the Pre-crime offices. He takes Agatha out of the nutrient water, and escapes again. Anderton then finds a hacker friend who primitively hooks Agatha up to a sort of video recorder and they manage to download the same pre-vision that Anderton saw at Pre-crime of himself murdering Crow. An anguished Anderton now begins to question if there even is a minority report for him. Then, Agatha shows Anderton the Ann Lively murder again while still recording. Inexorably, Anderton ends up in Leo Crow’s apartment where Crow is not present. While searching the room for clues to who Crow is, Anderton finds a pile of photos on the bed. The photos are of various children of all different ages. In this pile, Anderton finds photos of boy who he believes is his son, only a few years older. Anderton suddenly comes to the realization that there is no minority report and that Leo Crow is responsible for kidnapping his son. Then, Crow enters his apartment. Anderton suddenly attacks Crow with a viciousness that we haven’t seen until now. During the assault, Crow admits that he did kidnap Anderton’s son, but he drowned him. While all this is going on, Agatha tries to convince Anderton that the future is not set, that he has a chance of changing it by not killing Crow. As the scene unfolds exactly as the Pre-cogs predicted, and Anderton is about to shoot Crow, he reconsiders. He reads him his rights. In a shocking revelation, Crow says that if Anderton doesn’t kill him, Crow’s family will get nothing. We suddenly realize that the whole murder was a set-up. Crow refuses to tell Anderton who set him up, then grabs Anderton’s gun to point it at his chest. Anderton accidentally shoots and kills Crow when he quickly pushes Anderton's trigger finger before Anderton could react. Witwer and the Pre-crime team arrive too late and investigate the crime scene – the first murder to actually take place in six years. Witwer sees the pile of photos and raises questions as to what kind of child killer would leave such overwhelming evidence (an “orgy of evidence” – as Witwer states) in his room for anyone to find. For this reason alone, he concludes that the murder was a set-up. Witwer meets with Burgess, claiming that he’s been chasing the wrong man. He shows Burgess the Ann Lively pre-vision, but two different ones; one from Art and Dash taken from Pre-crime, the other downloaded directly from Agatha. He shows Burgess that the two images are slightly different and that someone got away with murder. Witwer intuits that someone high up in Pre-crime could have reviewed the pre-vision ahead of time, waited near the crime scene for Pre-crime cops to capture the man ABOUT to drown Ann Lively, and then after everyone left, commited the crime in the same way. Because techs at Pre-crime are trained to ignore repeat images that sometimes appear even after the pre-criminal is apprehended, the murder was not pursued. Burgess then interrupts this analysis and kills Witwer in cold blood. Since Agatha is with Anderton, the pre-cogs are not on-line to see this murder before it happens.
Seeking refuge in Anderton’s ex-wife’s house, Anderton also comes to the realization that he was set up because he learned about Ann Lively. He also realizes now that Ann Lively was in fact Agatha’s mother. The reason Burgess killed Ann many years prior was that she wanted her daughter back from Pre-crime. While this is going on Burgess arranges for the Pre-crime team to apprehend Anderton and send him to Containment as a pre-criminal. The cops do arrive and arrest Anderton. Later, Burgess accidentally reveals to Lara (Anderton’s ex-wife) that Burgess killed Ann Lively. Lara then takes it upon herself to rescue John Anderton. As Burgess is giving an acceptance speech in a large assembly for Pre-crime officially going national, Anderton confronts him on his crime by showing everyone in attendance the Agatha pre-vision of Burgess killing Ann Lively. With his reputation and career ruined, Burgess takes a gun and starts after Anderton with the intent on committing another murder. The Pre-cogs, now back online, have predicted this murder however, and the Pre-crime cops pursue the crime. In a final confrontation between Anderton and Burgess, Anderton says that he (Burgess) can choose his own destiny and not kill him. Either way, Burgess is at a dead end with Pre-crime hunting him down. Burgess decides instead to commit suicide. In the final sequence, Anderton narrates that Pre-crime was shut down and the Pre-cogs were taken to a secret location to live in seclusion. Anderton ends up remarrying Lara, and Lara is shown pregnant. 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. The movie asks the question whether we want to live in a society where crimes are preemptively punished (possibly unfairly), or in a traditional society where punishment occurs after a crime has actually been committed (less restrictive, possibly risking lives). After this first case, John Anderton sees a pre-vision that states he would kill a man named Crow, a person he had never met, and he finds this upsetting. Yet, as the movie progresses, his decision to escape justice, his belief in his own innocence and his search for the Minority Report generates the incident in the first place. However, the pre-cog Agatha (Samantha Morton) states at one point that since Anderton knows his future, he can change it. This is refuted when Anderton refuses to shoot Crow but ends up killing him anyway when Crow takes the gun and pulls the trigger on himself with Anderton holding it (claiming his family will benefit financially from his death). The prevision contains exact elements of the sequence of events as they occur, but the prevision as-is is misleading, showing Anderton killing Crow in cold blood. This gives rise to the question of whether Agatha's intervention may have been a simple event in the ultimate death of Crow, or whether the Crow's death was still the result in spite of Anderton's knowledge of the future. Another point to consider is that Andertons watch passes the time that the murder was scheduled to take place. The film leaves the answer ambiguous, ending the film with what appears to be someone making an important free choice, but not actually saying that this could not be pre-determined. It is important to note that the only times anyone in the film "changes" their fate is when they are informed of the possibilities of the future by the Pre-cogs - thus one possible interpretation is that the movie is saying we can only have freedom to change the future if we have the power to see it. Threat of dystopian government Another theme is the looming threat of a totalitarian society. Although Pre-Crime is extremely successful, effectively ending murder in Washington for six years, throughout the film we see that the people of the city have little privacy. Shops, mass transit, and government buildings are equipped with iris recognition devices, which identify each individual immediately (bearing some resemblance to a similar device in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). One of the movie's most spectacular scenes involves artificial robotic spiders ('spyders') scouring an apartment complex, barging into rooms without the permission of its residents or a search warrant. It raises the question of whether people would rather be safe or free. The loss of individual freedom is further explored when it is explained that the people arrested by Pre-Crime are technically innocent. They have not committed any crime at the time of arrest, yet they are sent to prison without a trial and without anyone having heard their side of the story. A darker aspect of the Pre-Crime unit is revealed in the detention facilities, in which prisoners are placed in disturbing animation suspension pods rather than in regular prisons. In the epilogue, it is revealed that all prisoners are pardoned. The epilogue also states that they (the police) will "keep an eye on some of them," most likely those that were supposed to commit premeditated or serial murders. It is also shown that the government and the powers-that-be are not above manipulating or outright lying to the public. Before Anderton enters the Pre-Crime building for the second time, the audience hears a Pre-Crime tour guide telling visitors that the three pre-cogs (Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur) are well taken care of and looked after by the Pre-Crime division, at one point stating, "It's good to be a pre-cog." In actual fact, the pre-cogs are kept heavily sedated in a sterile tank at all times, and likely have few fundamental rights, although they (obviously) do not complain. Everyone, including Anderton, treats them as little more than useful tools ("It's better if you don't think of them as human." , "Precogs are pattern-recognition devices, that's all."). Anderton is more bothered about the presence of Agatha's Minority Report (which raises questions about his previously held belief of its absolute nature) than he is about her condition. Eyes 'Eyes' and 'seeing' are a recurring motif. Examples include: The ending There are at least two interpretations of the events portrayed at the end of the movie. The literal view holds that all events in the plot occurred exactly as they were portrayed in the film, leading up to the largely upbeat resolution depicted immediately before the film's credits. An alternate interpretation advances the view that the events of the film's plot terminate 2:01:50 into the movie, when Anderton has been arrested, convicted of murder, and imprisoned. In this view, the remainder of the film consists of an extended dream sequence, and the ultimately favourable resolution is merely a creation of Anderton's subconscious mind. This latter view hinges on remarks made by Gideon, the guard portrayed by Tim Blake Nelson, when Anderton is being incarcerated. He says, "You're a part of my flock now, John. Welcome. It's actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions, that your life flashes before your eyes, that all your dreams come true". These lines seem to open the possibility that the remainder of the film is a dream and wish fulfillment. Another possibility also lies within Gideon's commentary before Anderton is incarcerated, though taken in a different fashion. As noted above, Gideon states that one's life flashes before one's eyes. With that in mind, it can be theorized that the movie, as it is watched, is Anderton dreaming about events which have already happened to him. This could explain the stylistic approach to the first two hours (the blue wash over the vast majority of the film being indicative of his dream-state, a wash which largely dissipates after Anderton is frozen). Spielberg has not mentioned that the ending should be interpreted in any fashion other than the literal one, and production notes from the film only indicate that at one point the writers had intended the film to contain a dream sequence in which Anderton interacted with his son shortly after the scene in which he was imprisoned. Score The score was composed and conducted by John Williams, orchestrated by John Neufeld. The vocals were sung by Deborah Dietrich. The score is largely (though not entirely) athematic, featuring an unusually large amount of atmospheric or highly jarring "questionably-tonal" music, though certain centerpieces, such as the action cue "Anderton's Great Escape" are written in a more familiar idiom. Connections are often drawn between Williams' approach and that of one of his strong composerly influences, Bernard Herrmann. Similar films The film explores several science fiction themes common to films and novels: Trivia See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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