Minority Report
February 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

We all want to know about the future. Even if we’re warned away from having too much information about it, we champ at the bit to know what things will be like in 10, 20, or 50 years. Will today’s science fiction be tomorrow’s fact? Will we still work, or will machines do everything for us? Steven Spielberg’s answers in Minority Report seem 100% satisfying. We will still work, at an even faster pace than today’s manic race, but machines will make it easier. Our main means of identification will no longer be the fingerprint; it will be the retina scan. Advertising displays will scan our retinas in the mall, thus personally addressing us with holographic ads as we try to get from one place to another. Since we will gain or be denied entrance based on our eye scan, a black market in eye transplants will arise.

But overall crime will decrease. New technical gadgets, such as hovercraft, will enable the police force to stop crime more quickly. And, as hypothesized in the plot of this movie’s script, someone will come up with a way to stop murder before it happens. Minority Report is set in 2054, when a six-year experimental program to arrest pre-felons is going full tilt. Three precognitive persons are floating in a tank of water, where they are wired into a sophisticated computer system. These "precogs" see crime that is about to happen and send their alarm signals to the system, where police officers manipulate the alerts. The foremost of these is John Anderton, the chief of the unit, who is a firm believer in the system, until he himself is fingered as a pre-murderer. He flees with his former friends in hot pursuit, trying to find the answer to this question: If someone knows he is about to commit a murder, can he change his mind and grind the wheels of fate to a halt?

Tom Cruise is perfect as Anderton. He has the hard exterior of the usual stick action hero, but shows an appealing, vulnerable, human nature under his stereotype surface. His portrayal is masterful and complex; the film owes much of its success to his efforts. He is surrounded by an adequate-to-very-good cast, and helped by an extremely intelligent script. This screenplay is the best of all worlds. It is an exciting crime story and a whodunit with fascinating twists and turns. It is a social-conscience story begging the question: Is it really ethical to arrest someone for a crime that he is going to commit, rather than waiting till he actually commits it? It is also a future-vision, science-fiction flick. These different themes are fused perfectly into a whole that is fully the sum of its parts

The DVD box contains two discs. The first features a stunning, sharp transfer of the film, with three soundtrack choices: Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround, and DTS 5.1. I could detect little, if any, difference between the two 5.1 tracks. Both were singularly effective at putting the viewer right into the scene at hand. They did well by John Williams’ music and the extremely complicated foley tracks.

The extras, oh the extras: You might come out calling Spielberg "St. Steven" after watching too many of them. I am happy that Spielberg is a nice person to work with; that is no doubt how he gets such great results. But it really comes across as self-serving to hear this repeatedly, albeit from different actors and technical persons. So many opportunities were missed here. A general discussion of the future, of Philip K. Dick’s books made into movies, or a talk about the blending of the science fiction and detective genres would have made for fascinating viewing. Instead, the extras here stay firmly rooted to this movie, and its achievements. Watched at one sitting, the extras play more like an extended pitch than anything else. Frankly, this is no different than the ancillary material for most movies on DVD. I believe viewers should demand more.

But, since there is no charge for that second disc, it might be unfair to complain too much. The movie is the thing, and that is a four-star effort presented in four-star video and audio. Younger viewers might have fun assessing its vision of the future now, then checking again in 51 years! My bet is that about 70% of it will have become a commonplace occurrence.

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