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Minority Report (Widescreen Edition)

Minority Report (Widescreen Edition)

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.24
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Minority Retort
Review: Over-hyped, over-budgeted film of an interesting book. Sure, there are intriguing paradoxes thrown up by the idea of future actions being used to guide our present paths - but done in such a ham-fisted way as this, with the ubiquitous "can we make another mission impossible please" Cruise in the leading role shreds what little credibility the idea had to begin with.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A promising but heartless effort
Review: This movie starts with an interesting premise. Through a complex technology that utilizes three wired "pre-cogs" emersed round the clock in a hot tub (now there's a job I'll apply for), murders can be interupted before they occur. In the riviting opening sequence, a woman is in the middle of an adulterous encounter. Her husband walks in, raises a knife to stab her, and experiences murderous interuptous by Tom Cruise and his pre-crime unit. The husband is hauled away, and we're left to wonder--did his wife get to finish what she was doing?

But this movie has two fundamental flaws. First, the cold, bleak, futuristic world is just too complicated and hoaky to care about. The precogs can predict murders, but not other crimes. The police in their George Jetson getups can zoom around effortlessly, but they can't clunk Tom Cruise over the head with a stick or nail him with a stun gun. The wierd lighting and photographic tricks can't disguise the truth. This world is more laughable than frightening.

Second, Tom Cruise is quickly emersed in perilous circumstances. Presumably, we're supposed to care because he is, after all, Tom Cruise. But no character development has made us care about him. Sorry about your wife and kid, Tom, but we need a little more. The wierd lighting and photographic tricks don't help. We don't care that you're in danger. The technology of your world is illogical, and that makes us care even less.

The movie suffers in comparison with a movie that is, on one level, rather silly: Demolition Man. Stallone's futuristic flick creates a human world with people we can care about. We know the good guys will prevail and the bad guy will get it, but we care.

The plot picks up as the movie goes on. There are some interesting twists and turns, but these suffer a bit from their resemblance to other movies. A good-guy-turned bad that's straight out of LA Confidential, and an incriminating video that only Robocop could have taken. But the escalating intrigue just can't make up for the fundamental flaws. For most of the movie, I was hoping a nuclear disaster would befall this heartless, overly complicated world and all its inhabitants.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This movie is the reason why people GO to the movies!!!
Review: Great story, effects, and poses moral questions to the audience. What more could you ask for? Minority Report topped Matrix for me as best Sci Fi movie. Just my humble opinion. Very relavent issues for today: loss of freedoms vs. security!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Majority Awful
Review: It's difficult to imagine how a film in this millenium could be worse. I would have rated it a zero, but that option isn't available. I dislike the word "boring", mainly because it so subjective. This doesn't rise to the level of boring. It probably would be acceptable for a four year old. Otherwise, it's great, i.e., the credits and end. Forget what's in between.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Enjoyable movie
Review: I really enjoyed this movie. You can spot it as a Steven Spielberg film because the hero/lead character does an amazing stunt that would in reality kill him. I always get a chuckle and think to myself "No way". It's fast paced and a nice ride but if you don't particularly care for sci-fi, then I wouldn't recommend it. You have to follow it carefully.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: We Went to Sleep by Dialing O
Review: Sleepwalking through yet another role Tom Cruise tries bravely to carry the movie on his back. He's lying there in the hot sun moving his legs trying to turn over but he can't. And the writer's aren't helping.
Whaddya mean they're not helping?
I mean they're not helping.
Apparently the movie is a test, designed to evoke an emotional response. The emotion is ennui or malaise or boredom or apathy. Get VKed on a film like this one and it's gonna be pretty hard to tell whether or not you're a replicant. However there might be a certain involuntary dilation of the iris as you think of the five portraits of George Washington that are no longer in your hip pocket.
I would rate this movie Double-Plus Ungood. Furthermore I would have the writers sent to the Ministry of Love and have them replaced by novel-writing machines. But actually, come to think of it, it is entirely possible that Minority Report was written by machines - the literary equivalent of a Quisinart. All you do is take the standard shlock Hollywood thriller plot formula, add in every old sci fi film you can think of, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Logan's Run, and some old Humphrey Bogart movie I forget the name of. Hit the pulse button until these movies have been reduced to disjointed fragments, add an emulsifier and you can move out of Central and take the tubeway home early, just in time to feed your electric sheep.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dirty, ugly, depressing -- what a great DVD!
Review: "Is it now?" a dazed seer asks Tom Cruise's rogue cop in "Minority Report." Viewers may well wonder the same thing during the sensational DVD presentation of Steven Spielberg's futuristic film noir.

The movie itself coolly transports viewers to a world 52 years ahead -- Spielberg's paranoid vision of life in the nation's capital seems not only possible, but probable at times.

Then there are the filmmaking techniques demonstrated on the DVD by the director's effects visionaries -- so cutting edge and visually startling that they seem right out of the movie itself.

The first disc (dual layer) contains only the film, no director's commentary. Director Spielberg has his say on the second (single layer) disc, which has a generous selection of bonus materials that are well organized and to the point. Menus have the nightmarish look of the "precog" visions that the film's cops use to predict and halt murders.

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's other-worldly color scheme -- achieved via an unconventional "bleach bypass" on the negative stock -- comes across with all of its unsettling power. Blacks seem devoid of light, full of despair. The cobalt blues saturate the images, evoking the specter of a locked-and-loaded police state.

The DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound are typical of Spielberg's DVDs, with an upfront bias and subdued directional effects. The chilling subwoofer bottom keeps listeners on edge.

The featurette compilation opens and closes with Spielberg and Cruise exchanging superlatives (the package actually has a beginning, middle and end). Spielberg talks about how "A.I." and "Minority Report" fit into his midlife vision quest. The director explains his "dirty, ugly" take on the future of U.S. society.

Wisely, most of the extras focus on the effects wizards and craftsmen who realized this future world. DVD content specialist Laurent Bouzereau keeps the featurettes moving along, with little time for the specialists to become tangled up in their thoughts. Fast-paced editing keeps the screen shots and on-set clips fresh.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Improvement Over the Original Story
Review: Minority Report, based on a mediocre short-story by the very talented sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, turns out to be a pretty good film with a fast pace, good special effects, and a twist and turn ending with at least one good surprise. It uses the original story only as a starting point, which is a good thing. The widescreen DVD version is great, but the second DVD with extras is not that exciting or informative, with basic explanations of how the movie was made. The last section is a Mutual Admiration Society meeting between Speilberg and Cruise, who claims that the director's ideas for the film were uniquely Spielberg's own. However, this movie would not be what it is without Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, another adaptation of a Dick tale. Great script and plot here, and the scene with Cruise jumping from car to car on a vertical highway blew me away.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Cool, but bizzare to the max
Review: This movie is GREAT!!! My brother hated it, which I thought was an over exaggeration. The plot is very bizzare and complicated. Kids under 9 might find this movie very complicated. A very good movie, but I say The Matrix is much better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Thriller
Review: For once, the Amazon critics have it right. Tnis movie ranks with Bladerunner, Vanilla Sky, and the underrated A-I. ESPECIALLY Bladerunner (add in Dark City). It has the same impersonal dismal vision of the future.

I was never a Tom Cruise fan. He was always the romantic pretty boy. But his last two movies, Vanilla Sky and now Minority Report, have made me a fan. And I have always liked a good Spielberg film. This film is not just a great expo for Spielberg special effects, it is a great thriller a la Hitchcock.

Set in 2054, murders are elinated due to `precogs' seeing the future. Max Von Sydow is the head of the Precog corporation (in typical Von Sydow style). Cruise is the Chief of the crew that prevents these murders before they happen, and the movie takes off when he becomes the target of one of these `visions'. He has to overcome incredible odds to prove he wasn't going to commit the murder the precog's predicted. But, TRUST ME, there is SO much more to the action than this short synopsis. I left it this way on purpose. If I tell all, it will ruin the effect of the movie.

About the cinematography...this is a dark film, and the whole movie is shot in near black and white. All the hues are toned down, and this sets the mood for the futuristic attitude (much like M. Night Shaymalan's Unbreakable) showing that there is no individuality. The fururistic vision of personalized advertising via retinal scanning is absolutely scary. I guarantee I will close my eyes in the future...

The sound is GREAT (for those of us with DTS). You hear rain drops to the side, and bubbles from the precog tank to the left. Absolutely SUPERB.

This is one of the best sci-fi thrillers I have seen this year. Again, this is not just a sci-fi movie. This is an excellent murder mystery not to be ignored.

If you have read my reviews in the past, you know I don't review poor films. Trust me, you will want to see this movie. I mean it.


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