Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's much bally-hooed adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story is a mostly solid film that comes close to excellence. If there is interest in a full treatment of the film versus its literary counterpart, I will go into that later. For now, the film:

The world envisioned in Minority report is a sort of collision between Timecop and "Brave New World." In it, violent crime is a thing of the past in our nation's capital, since the foundation of PreCrime, a police force which operates around the visions of three feral precognitives who alert the police of impending acts of violence before they occur. It then falls to John Anderton (Tom Cruise) and his team to determine the exact location of this future crime, and arrest its perpetrator before any harm can be done. Hunter becomes prey when Anderton's own name appears as the future murderer of a man he has never met. Anderton's quest to clear himself of a crime which he cannot comprehend himself capable of leads him on a journey of self exploration, and along the way he begins to question the foundations upon which his beloved criminal justice system is based.

Minority Report is not as dark as Blade Runner (which is based on a story by the same author), nor as campy as The Fifth Element, though it contains strong visual elements from both. Blade Runner explored the nature of the human soul set amid the dark, oppressive squalor of an apocalyptic near future. Report is more closely centered around the nature of free will, and is much more political in its applicability. The questions it asks about the criminal justice system reflect our own troubled times, the techno-logical extension of our own witch hunt.

The other social commentary provided in Report concerns technology's continuing erosion of anything resembling privacy. Crowds of people move through shopping centers and mass transportation facilities, their identifications ascertained at every turn in order to track movement and provide retailers with the ability to personalize their marketing. I don't know which is more unsettling.

I have to hand it to Spielberg. In such troubled times as ours, Minority Report is a daring film to release. It's darkly cautionary message must be told carefully, or risk public censure and reproach. Perhaps it was concern over this that led Spielberg to commit the few flaws that prevent this from being a thoroughly wonderful film. It's much easier to get a difficult message across to an audience with humor. While a spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, a cupful of chocolate sauce will ruin a perfectly good steak. Such is the case with Minority Report. It is too often interrupted by slapstick-ish, gross out humor. Watching Cruise chase his own dropped eyeballs as they bounce down a sloping corridor, I thought, "This is what would happen if Blade Runner had fart jokes in it". The audience laughed, and that was no doubt the intention. But to me, it introduced an element that seemed out of place...off key.

This type of comic relief was very common during a particular section of the film. Minority Report can be likened to a symphony in four parts. The first and third parts are beautiful compositions that are masterfully performed and conducted. During Act Two, it was as if all of the musicians got up and swapped instruments. The performers were the same, and they were playing the same music, but something was definitely wrong. The final act was to me, almost unnecessary. While it was technically performed proficiently, I would have been more satisfied if it had been left off. Instead, it introduced the requisite plot twist and ignoble resolution that any conscious viewer would have seen coming from about 20 minutes in.

In summation, Spielberg has redeemed himself from the wretched A.I. Artificial Intelligence, proving that he can do introspective, dark, near-future science fiction. Minority Report is a very good film, but suffers from a few near fatal flaws that prevent it from being truly excellent.