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Minority Report (Single Disc Edition)

Minority Report (Single Disc Edition)

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great - but not PG13
Review: I'll start with a word to the parents - even my 15 year old agreed this should have been rated "R". Very graphic, slow motion murder scenes. OK - even if the scenes hadn't really happened yet it was still disturbing to watch for the younger set. Other than that - for the most part, great pace and effects. Good plot. It was an interesting role for Tom Cruise to play - away from his slick Mission Impossible character. A few sentimental scenes (Spielberg's trademark) are ok - but overall - highly recommended. Great entertainment, great ending but a bit of a downer due to subject matter and mood of the film - aka Blade Runner.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Minority target audience
Review: It was good. Creepy. Edge of your seat thriller, but it should have been rated R. They had way too many nauseating and suggestive scenes that were NOT suitable for a PG13 movie. Other than that, it was really good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The 5 star thriller of the year!
Review: Minority Report is definitely one of the year's best movies! Cruise is a good actor and this movie is a must-watch for everyone! It may be a Spielberg movie but it's not the sentimental flick. It's a fast very creative movie. Spielberg has a great visual imagination! It's very entertaining and thought provoking. It's a delightful movie with great graphics. The whole cast did a great job as well as the crew. It's deserves the raving reviews and the 100 millions it has received on the box-office. It's something for all Spielberg and Lucas film fans. It's a spectacular sci-fi thriller. It's unexplainably good. The film is pretty futuristic and makes you wonder. It's dazzles the mid and the action sequences are award-worthy (MTV movie). It's something that'll be remembered as a great sci-fi classic! It's smart and enjoyable.

Running at a time of almost 2 and a half hours, Minority report revolves around Tom Cruise trying to save his life. The story takes place in the year 2054 in Washington where murder has been eliminated. This has taken place thanks to Precrime. Precrime is a program that uses the vision of psychics to put the future killers behind bars before they've done anything. John Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) is a Precrime enforcer who believes it's great due to the fact that in the past his son had been abducted. However Anderton is in one of the visions. His faith in the program has faded away and now he's on the run (as a fugitive?) trying to save himself.

Spielberg and Cruise are good together. It's not like a reality TV show. It's not an emotional comedy. It's intelligent and certainly compelling. The gadgets are very futuristic and are another enjoyable part of the movie. The story and the plot holds you at the edge of your seat. It's a little something that almost everyone will love. It's has scenes that you'll remember in a long time to come like the Jetpack chase-Fantastic!

It's something that all Sixth sense, AI, Tom Cruise, Spielberg, and Lucas fans will appreciate. It's something that fans of Blade runner will love. It's thoroughly entertaining and Kind of creepy! Fascinating ideas and gripping scenes make this movie great!

...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Minority Report - An Instant Classic?
Review: Washington DC, 2054... A 40 something year old man is about to commit a grisly murder - but he is stopped an instant before the murder was supposed to occur. Thanks to Washington's elite (and highly experimental) pre-crime unit, this potential murderer was apprehended before any crime had been committed.

"You are under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks"...

But why was he taken when he had done nothing wrong?

3 telepathic pre-cognitives saw what was to happen before it did.

These pre-cognitives are the entire backbone of the pre-crime system - a system that John Anderton (Tom Cruise) believes wholeheartedly. After his son's untimely death, Anderton began focusing all of his energy on ensuring that what happened to his son would never happen again...

Based on the Philip K. Dick short story of the same name, Minority Report features great directing courtesy of Stephen Spielberg, and in my opinion, one of Tom Cruise's best performances since A Few Good Men.

The setting, while highly imaginative and slighty futuristic, remains plausible and realistic throughtout the entire film. It is a perfect combination of CGI and physical sets; never overly glossy or synthetic.

In terms of the film's storyline itself, perhaps the best way to describe it is a cross somewhere between The Fugitive and Blade Runner (which, coincidentally enough, was also based on a Philip K. Dick story).

I recommend Minority Report highly, and would have given it 5 stars, had it not have been for the ending.

Without giving away any more than I already have, I'll just say that I thought the ending concluded the film a bit too well. Usually, this wouldn't be an issue, as it is certainly a satisfying conclusion, but... Perhaps it was just the fact that it tied Minority Report up to the point of being unable to continue the story in the future. Truth is, Minority Report is
the type of film that will leave the viewer begging for a sequel... Not because the plot doesn't get resolved (it does and does well) but because all in all it is a unique and greatly entertaining film - the kind many directors aspire to, but few succeed in, making.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Visually Dazzling
Review: Minority Report is an amazing movie. It's another Spielberg masterpiece; (let's frget A.I. shall we?) The plot is great and the movie itself has so many twists and turns. You have got to go see Minority Report.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good but no classic
Review: The new Spielberg movie is almost always the big movie event of whatever time it's released. He's one of those directors who knows how to keep his audience entertained, so that's why the darker efforts 'A.I' last year and now 'Minority Report' came as a bit of a surprise. The film in question concerns Cruise, a detective who specialises in pre-crime, whereby a group of three 'pre-cogs' work to discover the name of a murderer before he actually commits his crime. With his child dead and his wife gone, Cruise finds himself in a darker role where he takes drugs on his time off whilst watching videos of his little boy. That is, until the system turns on him and he finds out he's going to murder someone who he doesn't even know.

Basically this is one of those movies where there's plenty of things that are right with it but as a whole it's not really what you'd expect. The best things about the movie are the incidental things that make up the vision of the not-so-distant future, such as personalised adverts, newspapers that update themselves and a virtual reality play centre. Such a vision of the future also, realistically, doesn't move totally into a mechanised way of life where people are served by robots; people are still living in terraced housing, there are still parks for children to play in and there are still motorways. In addition, Cruise puts in a very good performance indeed, proving that he is more than able to pick up a lead role with a bit more oomph than many Hollywood A-listers. If he's not quite as good as he was in 'Magnolia', he certainly serves the picture very well. But then there's no real cast problems at all, and Samantha Morton as pre-cog Agatha perfects her role with an impressive wide-eyed, unsettling stare,

Unfortunately there is an awful lot here that seems to dissuade you from believing the critics that have hailed this as 'a masterpiece'. Mainly being that just when the audience is expecting a conclusion and for all of the plot threads to be woven back together there is actually another half hour to go. It's a shame that it can't quite build the tension up again, as everything just seems to fizzle out. Plus what really did happen to Cruise's son? With a mainstream blockbuster with big name stars the inconclusive ending doesn't work well. We're built up and built up and then there's a discernible nothingness. Still, this is heaps better than 'A.I', Spielberg's last sci-fi effort, and Cruise manages to lend the movie the right amount of humanity so that it never becomes overly sentimentalised like 'A.I' nor too sterile. And there's a lot to admire, in particular a gripping scene relatively early on where Cruise learns about the leaks in the system. The paranoid streak about whether the system is always working for the good of the people is probably the best thing about the film and is certainly the most disturbing aspect of Spielberg's vision of our future.

As a summer blockbuster it works and is entertaining, but it's still too drawn out and there's little to mark it out as being a true classic.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Spielberg Is Back To Basics. Well, Sort Of.
Review: "Minority Report" stroke a chord in me since Steven Spielberg is kind of coming back to the kind of stories he used to tell in the 70s and the first half of the 80s. It's great to see that Spielberg made this movie in widescreen after a streak of films he filmed in normal screen.
This is the story of a group of policemen who prevents crime before they actually happen thanks to the help of three telepaths. The premise of the story is quite interesting, and Spielberg manages to tell an action story very well because we see John Anderton (Tom Cruise) running away from his own colleagues from a crime he is supposed to commit in the future, and the chases are well-crafted.
One thing I have to criticize though is the fact that Steven Spielberg seems to have the shadow of Stanley Kubrick hovering over him, especially when he tells us the sub-plot of Cruise's character being a drug addict apparently because of his son's death; also he tries to go deep into the flaws that this so-called pre-justice system has. However, Spielberg seems to run away from those dramatically human points, and he gives an easy way-out to those problems by placing the drug addiction and the pre-crime system's imperfections in a very low level as if they don't even exist. If he wants to be like Kubrick, he has to deal with those parts head on.
Yet Spielberg knows how to keep his audience entertained, and he is a master of filming interesting stories. However, I still miss the Spielberg who made "Jaws", "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind", "E.T.", and the Indiana Jones movies.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Minority Report
Review: After the commercial dissapointment of A.I Artificial Intelligence, Steven Spielberg's upcoming film Minority Report is set in more traditional Science Fiction territory. This is Future-Noir at it's most inventive, with futuristic settings and amzing visuals. Tom Cruise, in his 25th film, is in superb form as the Pre-Crime agent who is on the run from his own people for a murder he hasn't commited (yet?). And the strong supporting cast of veteran Max Von Sydow and Colin Farrell gives added gravitas. The not-so-far away appearance of the system gives the film chilling realism. And this, more than anything else, is what gives the film it's kudos, for using a method of "futuristic" crimework that is completley believable. The action set-pieces and FX are absolutley amazing and the dark tone adds some well-played suspensful scenes, involving some creepy CGI creations. Building up to a tense and inpredictable climax, this is truly a great Sci Fi film that's up there with ground-breaking films like Blade Runner. Bravo, Mr Spielberg, bravo.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Mind boggling . . . wouldn't see it again though
Review: Fans of The Matrix ought to love this one - while the special effects are rolling and you're caught on the edge of your seat with anticipation, the movie throws out probing questions such as, are we predestined to our fates? Would our futures be the same if we could see them in advance? Is there such a thing as fate? Tom Cruise pulls off a stunning performance, and every moment of it is believable. While the general plot is easy to follow, it's the added surprises that give Minority Report its color - like the idea of using psychic humans for crime prevention, and all the futuristic yet very human technology. There's even a peek into a Gap store of the future.

The major part of this movie I couldn't stomach was the suspense. I'll admit I'm not a big fan of action movies and I was hoping for something a bit gentler on the gut, but that's just me. If you're like most people, the fright factor shouldn't be too much of a problem. Another thing I disliked was the lack of emotion in Minority Report - just about everything is grey, steel, and cold. Like The Matrix the tone of the movie was a grimness looking down upon the naive public. I noted some of the futuristic tech seemed copied from other movies released recently - the vehicles appear straight out of a Star Wars episode and the pictures in the newspaper move, ala Harry Potter - but surely they couldn't have?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Average and Less Than Compelling
Review: Preventative maintenance can go a long way in getting a lot of extra miles out of that new car, and without question, applying the same principles to health care can add years to your life. That's what "prevention" is all about; averting disaster and tragedy by taking measures to stop it before it happens. It's certainly not a unique concept, by any means (at least when it comes to things like cars and health care), but what about in terms of crime? Murder, for example; can there possibly be a way to anticipate and prevent even that? It's a proposition that director Steven Spielberg addresses in "Minority Report," a drama/thriller set in the near future, in which a kind of "HMO for Crime" has been established that does just that: A system that unerringly predicts and prevents murder. But just how accurate is it, really? Can such an operation be infallible beyond any doubt? That-- as they say-- is the question.

In Washington D.C., 2054, a "PreCrime" unit has been in operation for some six years now, under the leadership of Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow). Using a system whereby murder can be detected before it happens-- and thus averted-- the unit has successfully eliminated that particular crime in the D.C. area. One of the driving forces behind it all is Detective John Anderton (Tom Cruise), who has something of a vested interest in making this system work: Just before the inception of this revolutionary unit, Anderton suffered a tragedy in his own life; the kind of tragedy he hopes that no one else will ever have to endure again because of their efforts here.

Anderton's unit has been something of a prototype, however, and with the success rate they have enjoyed, the U.S. government is interested in taking the project nationwide. But they want to look a little deeper into the operation first, and so agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) is dispatched to investigate and root out any potential flaws that may have been overlooked on the local level. Burgess and Anderton maintain that the system is infallible, but then something happens-- Anderton himself is "seen" committing a murder in the near future. And it's going to happen in about thirty-six hours...

With films like "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan," Steven Spielberg has long since established himself as one of the "Greats" among film directors. Much of his success comes from the fact that he likes to tell stories about "people," and he always manages to find the human element within the story that make his films so engaging. Even the best filmmaker, however, is not going to produce a work of genius every time out; just as within every human being there is "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol, so it must be with the films of an artist of Spielberg's magnitude-- it is natural that his resume will include both. And this film-- which, without question is a good film-- is just not as compelling as some of his previous efforts. One of the reasons, I think, is that it is an inherently dark tale, and Spielberg is by nature too positive to take it to the depths that would have really made it emotionally absorbing.

As good as Spielberg is at exploring the complexities of human nature, he tends to get distracted by the environment within he must work to tell certain stories (like this one). He seems to have an innate aversion to things too dark, at which times he seems to turn to the gadgets, toys and myriad F/X at his disposal for diversion, and quite frankly, his vision of the future in this film fails to evoke that necessary sense of disquiet or foreboding in the way that Ridley Scott did so successfully in "Blade Runner," for example. The "look" of this film is more "amusement park ride" than the gritty realism of Scott's film. Compare and consider the differences between this film and "A.I" (another film with a dark, decidedly "non-Spielbergian" theme), and "E.T" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The latter, while falling within the Sci-fi genre, are basically upbeat, positive stories, with "E.T.," especially, focusing on the characters rather than-- or at least equal to-- the events as they occur. And nobody does a film like that better than Steven Spielberg.

This film was written by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick, and If only Spielberg (and the screenwriters) had been more willing to embrace the dark side of this story, he may have been able to create the kind of suspense that made "Jaws" so on-the-edge-of-your-seat riveting. But, again-- though this is a decent movie-- it simply is not the taut thriller it could have been, like Tony Scott's "Enemy of the State," which in many ways is similar to this film. There again, the sense of paranoia and suspense Tony Scott achieved with his film was due to the fact that he embraced the darkness and immersed himself (and his film) in it.

As Anderton, Tom Cruise gives a convincing performance and (as evidenced in "Vanilla Sky") he is continuing to mature as an actor. His trademark smile is there, of course, but he is relying on it less and less, which is helping him to develop his characters with more depth and detail, as he does here with his portrayal of Anderton.

Max von Sydow, as usual, turns in a believable performance as Burgess, but the character is intrinsically stereotypical, and he simply isn't afforded the time to develop his portrayal much beyond that.

The standout performances come from Colin Farrell, who lends some real nuance to his character and manages to make him truly three-dimensional; and from Samantha Morton, who creates the most emotionally involving character of the film with her portrayal of Agatha; and it's part of what makes "Minority Report" (like any Spielberg film-- even the "lesser" ones) worth the price of admission.


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