MINORITY REPORT
"After his unhappy fathomings of the future with 'A.I.,' Spielberg
has plunged back in and fished up something rich and strange... to
see a Spielberg film that starts with both sex and violence, as 'Minority
Report' does, is one of the more unexpected events in a moviegoer's
life, like coming across a tea party in the middle of late Peckinpah...Spielberg
is the perfect antidote to Hitchcock--he puts us through the shredder,
but he wants us to sleep well...I must admit that my bedroom walls
have never been shrouded in posters of Tom Cruise; this, however,
is his meatiest performance since 'Magnolia'..." --Anthony Lane, The
New Yorker
"Miscast, misguided, and often nonsensical, 'Minority Report' is nevertheless
the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg
has made in the decade since 'Jurassic Park'...even Arnold Schwarzenegger
would have been more convincing than action-twit Cruise...'Minority
Report' is a movie of haunting images and mindless thrills... Spielberg
himself may want to trade legal freedoms for security from terror,
but 'Minority Report's' recurring images of thought police drifting
down from the sky or crashing through the ceiling into someone's life
have a terrorizing resonance beyond the tortuous permutations of the
plot." --J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
"'Minority Report' may be the most adult film Mr. Spielberg has made
in some time. It's about the bloody blurring of passion and violence:
a compassionate noir...As Anderton, Mr. Cruise successfully shows
how unfulfilled determination becomes the all-American burden. It
may be one of his best performances yet...The film is magnificently
creepy, a calculated bad dream that stays with you like the best of
Roger Corman. It should be said, though, that Mr. Corman would have
made the film about 40 minutes shorter and trimmed the several climaxes.
Though he can still deliver an amazing scare, Mr. Spielberg's interest
now leans more toward exposition rather than the anticipatory. He
is explaining the fun away...With 'Minority Report' he toys with the
idea that there's more--and less--to Tom Cruise than meets the eye,
and he says we shouldn't trust our eyes, anyway. But doesn't he always?"
Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times
"Here is a master filmmaker at the top of his form, working with a
star, Tom Cruise, who generates complex human feelings even while
playing an action hero... It is as ingenious as any film noir screenplay,
and plays fair better than some. It's told with such clarity that
we're always sure what Spielberg wants us to think, suspect and know.
And although there is a surprise at the end, there is no cheating...This
film is such a virtuoso high-wire act, daring so much, achieving it
with such grace and skill. 'Minority Report' reminds us why we go
to the movies in the first place." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"'Minority Report' has a boring, one-dimensional story line you could
write on one page of Big Chief tablet paper with a No. 2 lead pencil...
Mr. Cruise, who barely survived 'Vanilla Sky,' one of the worst movies
ever made, bares his teeth and pecs in a variation of the same role
he played in that fiasco--a man driven insane by a technological bad
dream...Meanwhile, Mr. Spielberg pours on the gore. In one scene,
the star has his eyeballs surgically removed because in the future,
we are told, identity searches scan only eyes. (Gee, whatever happened
to fingerprints?)... Mr. Cruise gets lost in the stew like a carrot.
He looks like hell and goes through hell to earn his millions, but
in 'Minority Report' he's just a small black hole at the center of
an even bigger black hole." --Rex Reed, The New York Observer
"...as impressive as this disturbing, even haunting film can be, it
does not feel all of a piece. If anything, 'Minority Report' is trying
to do too much, trying to combine elements--philosophical, futuristic,
hard-boiled criminal--that haven't been made to completely cohere.
...'Minority Report's' plot finally suffers from a pair of extremes.
Initially, it has a tendency to be too intricate and difficult to
follow. The film's closing segment has the opposite feeling, going
for the kind of conventional tidying up that overcompensates for whatever
confusion it caused earlier." --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
"...by turns silly and amazing, a mishmash of Kubrickian devices accompanied
by a steady Spielbergian drip of sentimentality...Much of 'Minority
Report' is inspired, but the movie is also packed with oddball, overdone
acting, the occasional clunker cliche and the feeling that Spielberg
couldn't leave well enough alone... And it's way too easy to guess
the movie's villain." --Jami Bernard, The New York Daily News
"What's exciting about 'Minority Report' (and abrasive, too, in the
way of a good scrubbing) is the movie's relentless demonstration of
technological convenience inextricably entangled with a profound invasion
of privacy...there's something auspicious, and daring, too, about
the artistic instinct that pushes a majority-oriented director like
Steven Spielberg to follow 'A.I.' with this challenging report so
liable to unnerve the majority." --Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment
Weekly
"It's a mystery--as in, who's the dark presence behind all this?--but
it's not too difficult to figure out...'Minority Report' is a classy,
chilly quasi-Hitchcockian affair...Everyone's too busy shooting, firing,
running away or cajoling someone for information to get down and act."
--Desson Howe, The Washington Post
"Less poetic than Spielberg's severely underrated 'A.I.,' his new
film labors to make its complex plot accessible to audiences, with
lots of explanatory dialogue--and an ending that seems a bit schmaltzy
and pat, given what's come before. But that's a small price to pay
for one of Hollywood's most breathtaking glimpses of the near future--a
heart-pounding experience that makes you think and contains a gallery
of characters that will haunt your nightmares for years to come."
--Lou Lumenick, The New York Post
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