Newspoetry Movie Review: Minority Report

Precognition is what science fiction plays at, but in Minority Report, it can get you arrested. You know the plot: the department of "precrime" detains murderers-to-be on the basis of the predictions of psychically-gifted "precogs". Precrime's prompt arrests have flatlined the murder rate, but the system's legitimacy rests on the infallibility of the precogs, who after all, are as human as the public who has traded their free will for security. Or so they think: the system also makes it possible to frame people for murders they have yet to commit. Maybe John Ashcroft has been reading Philip K. Dick?

In the precogs' womb-like "temple"

The film is a grainy and washed out quasi-noir, and sets are cluttered and hazy. The plot is complicated, so the screenwriters expose it through dialogue (for example, at one point, Cruise asks another character "you see the dilemma, don't you?", then proceeds to explain the dilemma). Just grit your teeth and remember, it's a movie of ideas as well as a summer blockbuster, and unlike Blade Runner, we're not going to get a better cut. And sorry, there are no cute aliens. That's in theater 8, to your left.

Highly recommended.