OK, I should have known better, I admit it. But Hollywood did a good
job interpreting Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". But
"Minority Report" bares only scant similarity to the short-story; in
fact, one of the major points of the story, the Minority Report,
barely surfaces in the movie - I won't spoil Dick's story if you'
haven't read it yet. After Spielberg butchered (there's no other apt
description) Kubrick's last film, I guess I should have known what to
expect.
I'm assuming you know the basic plot: in the future, some humans have
pre-cognitive ability and can see murders before they happen. These
poor individuals (note that Spielberg presumably things he's being
clever by altering their names from the common Donna, Jerry and
Mike) are used by the police to prevent murders from happening. One of
these events involves the head of the group murdering someone he has
never heard of. He runs, and tries to find out who has set him up and
how. That sums up the similarity between the story and the film.
THE PLAYERS:
The movie shifts the players around, which means that new motives have
to be found for them. Cruise's kidnapped son is a thread that never
appears in the book. I guess Spielberg added it to make us feel
sympathetic, but it doesn't work. The acting, where it even exists, is
bland at best. The villain in the story does not appear in the film,
so Spielberg shifts characters around again to obtain a new villain.
THE ACTION/SPECIAL EFFECTS:
There are some interesting, though well worn, special effects. The
highways were neat, as was the fact that one can "dock" your car to
the outside of your apartment at the top of a high-rise. But most of
these have been seen, in one form or another, in other movies.
The computer screens are cool, but wholly impractical. They are
transparent plastic or glass. Perhaps they would work, but I for one
would find them so distracting - you'd see people making faces at you
behind your monitor.
In all this new-technology, shopping malls remain remain the same.
In fact, the technology in Ridley Scott's "Blade-Runner" is far more
convincing.
THE PLOT:
One of my biggest gripes is why call the film "Minority Report" at
all? The Minority Report hardly appears in the movie, and when it
does, it's rapidly brushed over. It is one of the main structural
elements of the short-story - more than that, it's the key. In the
film, it's nothing.
Various threads in the plot are left with no place to go - one
frequently pointed out is that Cruise had previously put-away the man
who performs his eye-surgery, a fact we learn as Cruise is being
anesthetized (God, how I would love that job!).
THE ENDING:
Why, why, why, why, does Hollywood have to put a happy ending on
things? They did this with Insomnia (a reasonably good movie) where
the the character played by Pacino is redeemed in the end by
dying (a predictable event). The Norwegian original (which I saw just
after) has a far more ambiguous ending. Similarly here, the story ends
with a very different fate for the characters than the film, in fact a
different fate for the whole pre-cog unit.
Two frightening aspects of the movie (apart from the fact that it has
Cruise in it) are
- the continual surveillance, which even the big commercial
operations use to tailor their adverts to you. There would be no
peace walking into a department store as each advert would scream
at you, calling you by name. Although an interesting idea, a little
thought shows it would not likely work.
- The fact that, unlike the story, the pre-cogs in the movie are
thinking, rational, intelligent human beings. It's frightening to
see what people will do to others in the name of power and control.
On the whole, not worth it. Cameron or Scott would have done a far
better job at creating the off-balance feeling that many of Dick's
stories have. Which brings me to the one highlight of the evening. The
tantalizingly short preview of Cameron's version of "Solaris". That
could be something worth seeing, though how he will reduce the tome to
a length that American movie-goers will accept (particularly given the
intellectual nature of the book) I don't know.
