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Minority Report (2002)

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 05, 2015 7:48 pm    Post subject: Minority Report (2002) Reply with quote



One heck of an energetic sci-fi action/adventure from Tom Cruise, with some strange and wonderful concepts driving the plot.

The first time I saw it, however, I really disliked the way the photography was deliberately pale and washed out, with very little color. It just seemed annoying, rather than atmospheric as intended.

My only complaint with the plot was that I never quite understood the reason the bad guy does what he does. Maybe it's something I sort of forget between viewings and then go, "Oh, right. Now I remember," the next time I see it. Very Happy

But on the whole, this is a very entertaining movie.

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Rocky Jones
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 06, 2015 7:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I liked pretty much everything about this one except the wacky ESP element. I kind of wished Spielberg had picked a somewhat more plausible futuristic story to film. I really liked the futuristic city and vehicles in it, though. I thought the low-saturation color tone style was kind of interesting, but not bothersome. The full body computer interface idea is probably the most influential aspect, though. Every so often in the tech news I see something referring to a "Minority Report"-style interface.

BTW, I understand there's going to be a TV series based on the film soon.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 06, 2015 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The movie was certainly packed with cutting-edge concepts and futuristic technology. Cruise has a great track record for making films with hi-tech elements, like the "Mission: Impossible" movies, and even "Knight and Day" (a great movie -- I love it!)
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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 10, 2015 9:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Always loved how they did the holographic interface with the consoles at the police station.

This seemed so incredibly high tech & far beyond people pushing buttons. Way cool!

They used the same holo-consoles look for the revived V TV series in the alien ships. Loved it.

That nifty rifle that Tom sported was also fantastic. He had to kinda revolve the whole thing whenever he would take a shot. Appeared to be a concussive force weapon, I think.
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 2:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This film always felt like Spielbergs version of BLADE RUNNER, but never quite getting it. Cruise was fine in it, but not as good as he was in ELYSIUM and EDGE OF TOMORROW.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 02, 2016 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________________

Did I hear somebody say, "Bud, please post the trailer for this great movie"?

No? Oh, well . . . too late now. Wink


__________________________________

____________ Minority Report (2002) - Trailer


_________

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 23, 2016 3:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This IMDB item surprised me. It seems like an odd way to produce the high-contrast, low-color look the film . . . which I don't really like.
________________________________

Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski bleached the film's negative in post-production to create the desaturated colors.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
This film always felt like Spielbergs version of BLADE RUNNER, but never quite getting it. Cruise was fine in it, but not as good as he was in ELYSIUM and EDGE OF TOMORROW.

First of all, I didn't care as much for Elysium as I did for Minority Report.

Second, did you mean to say that Cruise was is Elysium, or did I misread that?

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 6:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry, that should be OBLIVION. Those one word titles all seem to run together!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 9:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I like Oblivion better than Minority Report and Edge of Forever.
Very Happy
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

One thing I really like about this movie was the Hitchcock man-on-the-run story, but with a twist.

In this story he was NOT being "falsely accused of a crime and had to find the real criminal", Cruise was actually guilty of a "future crime" and had to prove he could choose not to commit it.

Hitchcock would have love it! Very Happy

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scotpens
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2019 10:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Rocky Jones wrote:
I liked pretty much everything about this one except the wacky ESP element.

That's the weakest element of this film. Supposedly the Precogs weren't telepaths or mentalists; they didn't read anybody's intent to commit a crime. They only predicted that So-and-So would commit such-and-such crime on such-and-such date. And they knew this just as surely as we know that gravity will make a rolling ball fall off the edge of a table.

Unfortunately, human behavior doesn't work that way. No one can know with absolute certainty that Person X will try using a new brand of toothpaste tomorrow morning, let alone commit a crime. The whole "Precog" angle is bogus.
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The Spike
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 31, 2019 8:42 pm    Post subject: Spielberg does Tech-Noir! Reply with quote

The year is 2054 and the murder rate in Washington is zero, the reason? Three Pre-Cognitives (each named after a literary great) whose combined abilities witness murders before they actually occur. Apparently faultless, it's then something of a surprise to Pre-Crime chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) when the Pre-Cogs predict he is to murder a man named Leo Crow. Forced to go on the run, and haunted by a family tragedy, Anderton must evade the system he so perfectly executed himself. Can he find a flaw? Or is he actually about to commit a murder?

Everybody Runs! That was the tag line that accompanied the explosive trailer for Steven Spielberg's, Tom Cruise starrer, Minority Report. This marketing tool indicated that the great bearded one had adapted from the Phillip K Dick short story and created an action monster? He hadn't, he had in fact created something far far better than popcorn fodder.

Minority Report was the next project for Spielberg following the equally dark and intriguing AI: Artificial Intelligence, both films serving to note that Spielberg was capable of thought provoking science fiction outside of the standard crowd pleasers that many critics love to decry. In fact, it's arguable that Spielberg may have hit his creative peak with Minority Report, for the messages and crawling dystopian bleakness on show paint a picture not so much as a future far away in our lives, but of one we live in now. Big thematic points of reference dot themselves throughout the piece. Such as the changing of eye balls, or that in these post 9/11 years we yearn, and always will, to be safer.

Here in this bleached shadowy world, a world of metallic tones and visual stings (ace cinematographer Janusz Kaminski on duty), we are safe under Pre-Crime. Yet still it's a world without soul, it has no heart, it's almost as if inhuman in itself, suggesting that the World's problems are not easily vanquished by technology - a total sacrifice of the World's inhabitant's souls. Spielberg of course is well served by the supreme professionals he has at his disposal, he has also managed to garner a great performance from Tom Cruise, something that critic and fan favourite directors have not managed to do previously. Believable grief, action work as strong as ever, it is however with his ability to imbue a tortured film noir protagonist where Cruise excels the most.

Alongside Cruise and operating with great impact are Samantha Morton as Pre-Cog Agatha and Max Von Sydow, the latter adding that touch of experienced know how needed for his particularly important character. The odd casting choice appeared to be Colin Farrell as the meddling, almost vindictive Danny Witwer, but he plays well off of Cruise, this even if he veers dangerously close to comic book villainy at times (check out a holy smoke Batman scene). What action there is is first rate, from a jet back pack pursuit, to car jumping heroics, the sequences are crafted with Spielberg's deft eye for an action sequence. While the sick sticks (yes you read right) metal spiders and a brilliant Peter Stormare cameo should hopefully have you squirming and grinning in equal measure.

Which brings us to the finale, an ending that may not be a complete surprise (yet it still doesn't cop-out in context to Anderton's tragedy), but things are rounded off in true classic noir tradition, where it closes down a thinking man's tech-noir. Superb. 9/10

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unfortunately the TV series taken from this did not do so well. The concept of "future crime" sounds too much like the so called "Red Alert" idea floated lately as a means of gun control....Where you can affect an individuals rights based on what they "might do" rather than on what they actually do. A bit of a slippery slope!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 15, 2022 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

scotpens wrote:
Unfortunately, human behavior doesn't work that way. No one can know with absolute certainty that Person X will try using a new brand of toothpaste tomorrow morning, let alone commit a crime. The whole "Precog" angle is bogus.

Scotpens is right in saying the precog concept was sort of presented as if it was about statistical predictions of something that might happen, based on data that's been carefully considered.

That, of course, was not what the movie wants us to think precogs do. They're supposed to be fortune tellers who see unchangeable future events. But the movie's central conflict was the idea that a "future event" was not set-in-stone so to speak, it could be altered by people who have the knowledge that the event might happen.

It's the age old question; if there were actual fortune tellers who could see future events, would those events be unavoidable even if someone knew about them and tried to change the future?

Minority Report's premise is like a time travel story, in which the traveler comes back from the future with knowledge of things that will eventually happen, but then he alters the cause-and-effect chain that leads up to those events, and other things happen instead.

The big difference in Minority Report is that the knowledge of the "future events" was always received right before the events, so there was barely time to stop them.

And of course . . . there was no time traveler who provided the knowledge of the "future events". So, the only way the premise would work is to assume there IS a future that can be seen by special people in the present.

I'm not sure that's any more bogus than Back to the Future or The Time Machine. (Or any less bogus, I guess.) They all rely on highly illogical assumptions about how the universe works.
Confused
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