What's the difference between a left-winger and a right-
winger? My dictionary says:
Conservative: adj. & n. from Latin conservatives. A
conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.
Liberal: adj. & n. from Latin liberalis. A liberal is a
conservative who's been arrested.
You can't get more down-to-earth than that, and while the
words are not mentioned even once in Steven Spielberg's
spellbinding piece of thought-provoking eye-candy, "Minority
Report" is implicitly about American society's shifting to and fro,
back and forth, depending on how dangerous crime and its big
brother terrorism have become. In times of peace such as
when Communism died and Westerners seemed to act as
though on Ecstasy, we were all liberals. When Islamic
extremists launched a successful attack against the United
States on 9/11, we moved to the right. "Minority Report" deals
with an experiment taking place in Washington D.C. that
appears so successful in stamping out murder (though
apparently not other infractions of the law) that the public
embrace it without apparent dissent. As the movie, based on a
short story by Philip K. Dick (whose thirty-six novels are
nowhere to be found in the entire Brooklyn Public Library
system) and adapted for the big screen by Scott Frank and Jon
Cohen, progresses, we are given pause. Could there have
been some mistakes, some cases in which innocent people
have been sent away? Might the entire crime prevention
program have been set up by ambitious politicians coveting key
slots in a newly-created government agency and willing to cover
up or even commit crimes of their own to maintain themselves
in power?
Since "Minority Report" is under the direction of Steven
Spielberg, we can expect and we get visuals unmatched by
anyone else in the industry. Nor does the intricate story
disappoint: a tale so complex that like "Mulholland Drive" can
require a second viewing to grasp its subtleties. What comes
across by the time this 143-minute dazzler wraps up is that the
incomparable Spielberg has moved forward in yet another
direction: gone is the fairy-tale tone of "E.T." and the warm and
fuzzy shades of "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence." Instead, Spielberg
has given us true grit, with his cinematographer Janus
Kaminski's using a bleached-out process to evoke a dangerous
D.C. and by extension, a parlous planet. Despite the off-putting
sentimental conclusion, "Minority Report" possesses all the
features of noir film making, a congeries of sinister shadows,
eye-scanning high-tech spiders, and much, much more.
The story, blessed with a production design by Alex McDowell,
takes us to Washington in the year 2054, a city which retains
the great, timeless monuments overlooking an upper-middle-
class district of contemporary suburban residences and inner-
city squalor. Inside a government building we observe nothing
like the bureaucracy familiar to anyone trying to renew or
process of driver's license, but rather a palace of technological
marvels, of transparent computer screens with an array of
enigmatic formulas, all of which serve to deter crimes before
they happen. This is the headquarters of Pre-Crime, housing
three Pre-Cogs two males and a female whose unusual births
have given them the ability to watch the commission of murders
before they occur and transfer their images onto a computer
screen. The screen is watched by the chief, John Anderton
(Tom Cruise) a competing FBI man, Dan Witwer (Colin Farrell),
all under the supervision of the head of the organization, Lamar
Burgess (Max von Sydow).
Because John's little boy was kidnaped six years back, John
has become your classic, crime-hating, lock-'em-up-and-throw-
away-the-key conservative and has bought into the new
technology. However when the Pre-Cogs observe that John
himself is about to commit the crime of murder in a couple of
days by shooting a man who is currently to him a stranger,
John's political views veer subtly to the left. He runs.
Much of the film involves John Anderton's attempt to figure out
how in blazes he could commit such a crime when he had never
heard of the alleged victim. When he is not pondering the
issue, he's running and tells a fellow worker "Everybody's got to
run." This gives us in the audience a chance to watch director
Spielberg's adeptness with car chases, one of which takes us
through some of the grittier sections of town pursued in one
instance by Agent Wither in a car that can move sideways as
well as in the conventional manner. Nor can John find a hiding
place because the enforcers let loose a barrage of
technologically controlled spiders which can crawl into every
nook and cranny of every seedy hotel room and force
inhabitants to show their eyes for a scan.
Tom Cruise's strong performance is matched by side roles,
particularly some creepy shtick by a deranged doctor (Peter
Stormare) who transplants new eyes into the pursued man
followed by bandages which the spiders at one point insist on
pulling away; by Lois Smith as Dr. Iris Hineman, the creator of
the program who may now have regrets; and an especially eerie
job from Samantha Morton as Agatha, the leading Pre-Cog who
has been whisked away from the pool housing her and her two
fellow Pre-Cogs looking pretty dreadful shorn of hair and
eyebrows and without the proper clothes that a Gap store will
supply for her. To make certain that we're all suitable
frightened, John Williams has furnished a score that opens with
a section of Shubert's Eighth Symphony and moves on to subtly
contemporaneous sounds.
In an interview, Steven Spielberg reported, "Right now, people
are willing to give away a lot of their freedoms in order to feel
safe. They're willing to give the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. far-
reaching powers to root out individuals who are a danger to our
way of living....How much freedom are you willing to give up?
That is what this movie is about."
Since the best science fiction is not only riveting entertainment
but also a way of addressing contemporary issues, "Minority
Report" shows its awareness of current political trends, seeming
to come out of today's headlines at a time that American
liberties are affected by the terrorism of Islamic extremists. At
present most Americans seem perfectly willing to allow
suspected terrorists to be hauled away by the authorities and
detained not as regular suspects but as enemies of the state,
subject to be held for a month or more without charges. Yet in a
recent situation, our Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, made an
assessment of one such suspect that was so grim, so
melodramatically hyped, that even President Bush was angry.
How about it? Do you see Pre-Crime or at least the version
being utilized in our more prosaic year of 2002 as a valid way to
treat suspects? Does it bother you that your neighbors, maybe
even you, can be taken away and help without bail and without
a hearing for months, all in the name of safety? Are you
concerned that your privacy is being whittled away in the name
of security?
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
