[Newspoetry] newspoetry movie review: minority report

[Editor-Within-Chief]

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 Phillip K. Dick?

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.


--
Joe Futrelle
editor-within-chief
http://www.newspoetry.com/