Minority Report

Hollywood has a strange relationship with science fiction, especially when it comes to the higher budget end of the market. It has a tendency to treat it as the selling point, the focus of the trailer, and a method of getting bums upon seats. Maybe it's aliens or maybe it's time travel, maybe the world ended and some overpriced monkey gets to remake Shane with laser cannons, but it's often unimportant, the general idea is to get the concept out of the way as soon as it can so it can go back to being a generic actioner with a thin coating of sci fi trappings.

Minority Report looks like such a movie. It's a little too glossy, the trailers are full of expensive looking action and of course it stars one Tom Cruise, who has founded half a career and probably a string of mansions on the basis of disposable big budget popcorn fodder.

But it's not. It's all a cunning disguise. It is packed with sci fi, it's brimming with the stuff. It throws away ideas that might have been the entire premise of a lesser movie. It's not especially "hard" or deep, it's still something of a chase movie as opposed to exploring the moral implications of punishing crimes that have been predicted, but it's clearly had a good hard think about how technology will affect certain elements of society and has sprinkled it's innovative thoughts lovingly throughout. And few are placed incidentally. The futurism is the very driving force, it's narrative, events and action are all determined by or in reaction to it's fantastic elements. The plot is nicely complex, as one would hope from a plot revolving around predetermination, and while there is one major element that can be surmised by anyone familiar with Columbo, there are some decent surprises along the way.

Cruise himself seems a little misplaced, I believe a less established star might have been able to explore the character more rather than doing his usual thing, but ultimately it is not to any great detriment, and his presence probably helped with the funding so I can't complain too loudly. There are also a couple of leaps in logic within, but the film had built up adequate goodwill for me to consciously ignore them.

Essentially the film is how blockbuster science fiction should be done, but so rarely is. It manages to strike a strong balance between it's intelligence and action without letting either down, you don't have to pay tremendous attention to understand the flow, but are rewarded if you do. It's also always good to see a future in which there are jetpacks.