Sight Unseen Review: Minority Report
This is the first in a series of reviews of movies I haven't seen. Any spoilers are entirely accidental.
Steven Spielberg doesn't break any new ground with Minority Report, but as always, he takes good ideas and apparently does a great job with it. If you saw AI, forget about everything you saw there: ths movie doesn't seem like it is at all similar, except that it is in the future, and is directed by Kubrick^WSpielberg.
Minority Report is about a policeman (Tom Curise) who works for a special unit that knows who is going to commit what crimes. I doubt they make this premise believable, although 1. it's science fiction, so no one probably cares and 2. if anyone can make it believable, it's Spielberg. Again, ignore AI.
So Cruise goes around arresting people who haven't done anything wrong, and I would probably be annoyed by Spielberg's likely attempts to draw comparisons with what is going on in the world today. But I am sure I would get beyond that quickly because of the action, good acting, phenomenal directing, and quick-paced storyline, especially when Cruise himself is accused of being about to commit a crime.
I think it would be cool if they made this into a self-fulfilling prophecy mindbender like in that scene from The Matrix where Keanu meets the Oracle, but my guess it is more like that Max Headroom episode where a computer just decides to make stuff up about him. Either way, it would probably cause me to reflect on the role of technology as a controlling influence of our society, and I would think that I had gained new insight into the potential plight we are all in, and say that we need to take steps to make sure this kind of thing never happens. Computers are everywhere, and they can control everything we do, if we let them; but never should we take away our rights and responsibilities, even for apparently all-powerful technology.
The movie probably ends with Cruise beating the system, maybe by showing the world how flawed it is so that no one ever has to be subject to such unfair persecution/prosecution ever again. Either that or he ends up in jail or dies, and the movie ends with a camera shot pulling away from him, seeing the whole city, and it's at night and/or raining, and we feel like the future is hopeless.
I think I'd walk away from the movie thinking it was very good and I might want to buy it on DVD when it comes out, though the filmmaking was more impressive than the message.
Steven Spielberg doesn't break any new ground with Minority Report, but as always, he takes good ideas and apparently does a great job with it. If you saw AI, forget about everything you saw there: ths movie doesn't seem like it is at all similar, except that it is in the future, and is directed by Kubrick^WSpielberg.
Minority Report is about a policeman (Tom Curise) who works for a special unit that knows who is going to commit what crimes. I doubt they make this premise believable, although 1. it's science fiction, so no one probably cares and 2. if anyone can make it believable, it's Spielberg. Again, ignore AI.
So Cruise goes around arresting people who haven't done anything wrong, and I would probably be annoyed by Spielberg's likely attempts to draw comparisons with what is going on in the world today. But I am sure I would get beyond that quickly because of the action, good acting, phenomenal directing, and quick-paced storyline, especially when Cruise himself is accused of being about to commit a crime.
I think it would be cool if they made this into a self-fulfilling prophecy mindbender like in that scene from The Matrix where Keanu meets the Oracle, but my guess it is more like that Max Headroom episode where a computer just decides to make stuff up about him. Either way, it would probably cause me to reflect on the role of technology as a controlling influence of our society, and I would think that I had gained new insight into the potential plight we are all in, and say that we need to take steps to make sure this kind of thing never happens. Computers are everywhere, and they can control everything we do, if we let them; but never should we take away our rights and responsibilities, even for apparently all-powerful technology.
The movie probably ends with Cruise beating the system, maybe by showing the world how flawed it is so that no one ever has to be subject to such unfair persecution/prosecution ever again. Either that or he ends up in jail or dies, and the movie ends with a camera shot pulling away from him, seeing the whole city, and it's at night and/or raining, and we feel like the future is hopeless.
I think I'd walk away from the movie thinking it was very good and I might want to buy it on DVD when it comes out, though the filmmaking was more impressive than the message.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
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