Minority Report (film)
| Minority Report | |
|---|---|
| File:Minority Report.jpg | |
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Written by | Screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen Based on the short story by Philip K. Dick |
| Produced by | Jan de Bont Bonnie Curtis Gerald R. Molen Walter F. Parkes |
| Starring | Tom Cruise Max von Sydow Colin Farrell Samantha Morton |
| Cinematography | Janusz Kaminski |
| Edited by | Michael Kahn |
| Music by | John Williams Matthew Ferraro Paul Haslinger (Songs) |
| Distributed by | Worldwide Theatrical and Non-USA DVD/Video 20th Century Fox USA DVD/Video DreamWorks SKG |
Release dates | June 21, 2002 |
Running time | 145 min |
| Country | USA |
| Languages | English, Swedish |
| Budget | $102,000,000 (estimated) |
Minority Report is a 2002 science fiction film directed by Stephen Spielberg. The film is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story "The Minority Report". It is set in Washington D.C. in the year 2054. The film stars Tom Cruise as Jon Anderton, a "pre-crime" officer, who apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge. The foreknowledge is provided by three psychics termed "pre-cogs". The senior pre-cog, nicknamed Agatha, is portrayed by Samantha Morton. Colin Farrell plays Danny Witwer, an agent from the Department of Justice who is sent to observe the process, and Max von Sydow plays Lamar Burgess, Anderton's superior. It is one of several films based on stories by Philip K. Dick.
The film cost more than $100 million to make, though it made more than three times that in worldwide box office, and sold at least four million copies in its first few months of release on DVD.[1] Minority Report was one of the best reviewed films of 2002,[2] and was nominated for and won several awards.[3] These included four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. Minority Report also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing. The film has a distinctive look, featuring desaturated colors which make it almost resemble a black-and-white film, yet the blacks and shadows have a high contrast, resembling a film noir picture.
Production
The original story by Philip K. Dick was previously adapted as a potential sequel to Total Recall by writers Ronald Shusett and Gary Goldman (later joined by Robert Goethals).[4] The setting was changed to Mars with the pre-cogs being people mutated by the Martian atmosphere, as established in the first film. The main character was also changed to Douglas Quaid, the man played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.[4] The project eventually fell apart but the writers, who still owned the rights to the original story, rewrote the script, removing the elements from Total Recall. This script was eventually tossed out when writer Jon Cohen was hired in 1997 to start the project over from scratch.[4] The only original element from the early script which made it to the final film is the sequence in the car factory, an idea that Spielberg loved.
When Spielberg originally signed on to direct he planned to have an entirely different supporting cast. He originally offered the role of Witwer to Matt Damon, Lois Hineman to Meryl Streep, Burgess to Ian McKellen and Agatha to Cate Blanchett. After the death of Stanley Kubrick, this project was put on hold while Spielberg finished Kubrick's project A.I., and all the roles other than Cruise were recast.
For research in 1999, Spielberg invited fifteen experts convened by Global Business Network and its chairman, Peter Schwartz (and the demographer and journalist Joel Garreau),[5] to a hotel in Santa Monica, California to brainstorm and flesh out details of a possible "future reality" for the year 2054. The experts included Stewart Brand, Peter Calthorpe, Douglas Coupland, Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, Jaron Lanier, and former MIT architecture dean William J. Mitchell.[6] While the discussions did not change key elements needed for the film's action sequences, they were influential in introducing some of the more utopian aspects of the film, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described the film as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what we envisioned in 1999.[7]
Synopsis
Template:Spoiler The film is set in Washington, D.C. in the year 2054. The film opens as Anderton and his team are in the midst of apprehending a suspect. In this sequence, it is revealed that the pre-cogs only relate the time/date of the murder, the murderer's name, and the victim's name. All other facts of the crime can only be ascertained by clues given by the various images relayed around the time of murder. Images transfer from the pre-cogs' minds to a computer display, and then Anderton manipulates the images in a manner similar to a virtual reality interface to better determine how the murders might or will happen. Anderton is observed during this process by Danny Witwer, an agent from the Department of Justice. Witwer is sent to evaluate the system because the country is about to vote on whether to expand the Pre-Crime program nationally.
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Later that day Anderton goes to his apartment, where he watches home movies of his six-year old son. It becomes evident that his son is deceased, and that he is now divorced. The next morning, Witwer is given a tour of the pre-cogs' chamber. The pre-cogs are seen floating in a translucent substance, which a technician explains helps enhance the images that the pre-cogs produce. After the tour, Anderton stays behind, and the pre-cog Agatha emerges from the pool. She draws Anderton's attention to the ceiling, which displays images of a woman being murdered. Intrigued by a murder which he's never seen, Anderton decides to investigate. He learns that the other pre-cogs' images are on record, but Agatha's recorded images are missing. He then conveys this information to Burgess, who appears unconcerned.
Anderton then returns to the pre-crime offices and investigates a new case. A murder is to take place in 36 hours. The murderer is revealed to be Anderton himself. Believing that he is being set up since he doesn’t know the victim, Anderton takes it on the lam. He manages to escape Witwer and a team of pre-crime officers in a car factory and seeks refuge in the country home of a woman named Iris Hindeman, who was one of the pioneers of pre-crime. Hindeman reveals that the three pre-cogs do not always agree in their opinions about the future; when this happens, the dissenting opinion is left out. Thus, Anderton's only hope at proving his innocence is acquiring the hidden "minority report" from which the film takes its title.
Travelling undetected is difficult, since everyone is subjected to retina scans at all times. Therefore, Anderton visits a shady doctor (played by Peter Stormare) and receives an eye transplant. While sleeping to recover from the surgery he has a dream, where it is revealed that his son was abducted. He awakens to discover that the pre-crime team is investigating the building he is in. The team dispatches "spyders," robotic eye scanners, to the various rooms to find and ID Anderton. Anderton tries to hide but is scanned. The surgery proves successful and he is not identified as John Anderton. Later, he manages to reach the pre-crime offices. He takes Agatha out of the nutrient water—permanently disrupting the pre-cog hive mind that makes pre-crime work—and escapes again. Anderton then finds a hacker friend who accesses Agatha's vision of the murder. The vision is identical to the one Anderton intercepted himself.
Anderton then goes to Leo Crow’s apartment where Crow is not present. While searching the room, he finds a pile of photos of children, one of which is a photo of his son. Anderton suddenly comes to the realization that there is no minority report for himself, and that Leo Crow is responsible for kidnapping his son. Anderton had pre-planned this murder, a long standing wish to kill the previously anonymous person who took his son. Then, Crow enters his apartment and Anderton attacks him eliciting a confession. While this is going on, Agatha tries to convince Anderton that he does not have to kill Crow. Anderton reconsiders and reads Crow his Miranda rights. Crow then says that if Anderton doesn’t kill him, Crow’s family will get nothing: the entire murder was a set up. Crow then grabs Anderton’s gun to point it at his chest and manages a cop-assisted suicide by worrying Anderton's hand. Anderton and Agatha then leave the apartment.
Witwer and the pre-crime unit arrive and investigate the crime scene. Witwer sees the photos and becomes skeptical of what happened due to the "orgy of evidence". Witwer then meets with Burgess to discuss his doubts with him. He shows Burgess the Ann Lively pre-vision, but two different ones; one from Art and Dash taken from pre-crime, the other a minority report from Agatha. He shows Burgess that the two images have slight differences, such as water lapping in opposite directions. Witwer intuits that they were altered. Burgess interrupts this analysis with a bullet; since Agatha is with Anderton, pre-crime is not able to prevent Witwer's murder.
Anderton then hides in his ex-wife Lara’s house, while there he comes to realize that he was set-up because of his discovery of the Ann Lively murder. Lively is revealed to be Agatha's mother, and was killed because she wanted to re-unite with Agatha. The police then arrive and arrest Anderton. Later, Burgess accidentally reveals to Lara that he killed Ann Lively. As Burgess is giving a speech, Anderton confronts him on his crime by showing everyone in attendance the Agatha pre-vision of Burgess killing Ann Lively. Burgess takes a gun and starts after Anderton; he eventually decides to commit suicide instead, as killing Anderton would undermine the program itself.
In the final sequence, Anderton narrates that pre-crime was shut down, all of the pre-criminals who were imprisoned by pre-crime were unconditionally pardoned and released, and the pre-cogs were taken to a secret location to live in seclusion. Anderton ends up reconciling with Lara who is now pregnant. Template:Endspoiler
Score
Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 (commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony) features prominently in the film. The score itself was composed and conducted by John Williams and orchestrated by John Neufeld. The vocals were sung by Deborah Dietrich. The score is largely (though not entirely) athematic, featuring an unusually large amount of atmospheric or highly jarring "questionably-tonal" music, though certain centerpieces, such as the action cue "Anderton's Great Escape" are written in a more familiar idiom.
Style
Minority Report is a futuristic film which portrays both elements of a dystopian and utopian future. The film renders a much more detailed view of a near-term future world than that present in the original short story, with depictions of a number of technologies related to the film's themes. The film also omits certain story details (no punch cards for example).
From a stylistic standpoint, Minority Report resembles A.I., (its immediate Spielberg-directed predecessor) more than the much earlier E.T.. The picture was deliberately overlit, and the negative was bleach-bypassed during post-production.[8] This gave the film a distinctive look, with colors severely desaturated,[8] almost to the point where the film looked like a black-and-white film,[8] yet the blacks and shadows had a high contrast,[8] looking almost like a film noir picture. Elvis Mitchell, formerly of the The New York Times, commented that, "The picture looks as if it were shot on chrome, caught on the fleeing bumper of a late 70's car."[9] This distinctive look is the first major stylistic shift in science fiction films since Blade Runner and the "used future" look of Alien, and has subsequently influenced cinematography and production design in the same way that those earlier pictures influenced the look of the science fiction films of the 1980s and 1990s.
Critical Reception
The film received highly positive reviews with the review tallying website rottentomatoes.com reporting that 199 out of the 217 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 92% and a certification of "fresh".[10] The website summarized the reviews by saying that the critics' "consensus" on Minority Report is that it is "[a]n intelligent and visually imaginative film that ranks among Spielberg's best."[11] Metacritic.com, another review tallying website, reported that the movie scored an 80 on the website's aggregate.[12] They based this on 37 reviews tallied, which they characterized as "Generally favorable".[12] Roger Ebert gave the film four stars and called it "...a triumph--a film that works on our minds and our emotions,"[13] listing it as the best film of 2002. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine called the film "a major accomplishment",[14] but felt that "the script raises moral questions it doesn't probe."[14]
See also
References
- ^ Home Video (DVD & VHS) Out Sells Feature Films, Video Games and Movies in 2002, audiorevolution.com, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ Best of 2002, rottentomatoes.com, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ Minority Report awards page, imdb.com, accessed March 11, 007.
- ^ a b c Koornick, Jason. The Minority Report on ‘Minority Report’: A Conversation with Gary Goldman, philipkdickfans.com, July 2002, accessed March 15, 2007.
- ^ Garreau, Joel. Washington As Seen in Hollywood's Crystal Ball, Washington Post, June 21, 2002, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ Kennedy, Lisa. Spielberg in the Twilight Zone, Wired, June 2002 issue, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ Clarke, Darren J. MIT grad directs Spielberg in the science of moviemaking, mit.edu, June 17, 2002, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ a b c d Jocobson, Colin. Minority Report, dvdmg.com, December 11, 2002, accessed March 12, 2007.
- ^ Mitchell, Elvis. Halting Crime In Advance Has Its Perils, The New York Times, June 21, 2002, accessed March 12, 2007.
- ^ Minority Report entry, rottentomatoes.com, accessed March 11, 2007.
- ^ Info & Tidbits On Minority Report, rottentomatoes.com, accessed March 14, 2007.
- ^ a b Minority Report entry, Metacritic.com, accessed March 14, 2007/
- ^ Ebert, Roger. Minority Report review, Chicago Sun-Times, June 21, 2002, accessed February 12, 2007.
- ^ a b Travers, Peter. Minority Report, Rolling Stone, June 18, 2002, accessed March 12, 2007.
External links
- 2002 films
- 20th Century Fox films
- Action films
- American films
- Best Science Fiction Film Saturn
- Cyberpunk
- DreamWorks films
- Dystopian films
- English-language films
- Swedish-language films
- Films based on short fiction
- Films based on the works of Philip K. Dick
- Films directed by Steven Spielberg
- Films shot in Super 35
- Multimodal interaction
- Tech-noir films
- Thriller films