Minority Report Review

In "Minority Report" filmmaker Steven Spielberg and superstar Tom Cruise team up for the first time, on a science fiction thriller based on a short story by "Blade Runner" creator Phillip K Dick.

In the Washington DC of 2054 murder has been eliminated thanks to the Justice Department's elite Pre-Crime unit, where the psychic visions of three 'Pre-Cogs' allow the future to be seen and the guilty punished before the crime has ever been committed. Cruise plays the unfortunately named head of Pre-Crime Chief John Anderton, a man whose unshakable faith in the system is challenged when its revealed that he is set to murder a total stranger within thirty six hours…

As you'd expect from the Oscar winning team of director Spielberg and his regular cinematographer Janusz Kaminski the film always looks great, presenting us with a grey vision of a future that - like "Blade Runner" before it - is often grounded in today (even if the number of clever interactive 3D ads does seem little more than an over the top product placement opportunity!). It also features the obligatory Hollywood blockbuster allocation of state-of-the art special effects which, refreshingly, don't detract too much from the narrative. Although the film features the kind of lapses in logic unique to the world of the movies it does feature a plot which makes clever use of the 'Pre-Cogs' unique abilities and is, to all effects, a fine looking thriller which just happens to take place half a century from now.