Minority Report (2002)
No. 94 on my NYT 21st Century Top 100 Rewatch
John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is motivated to find the man he will eventually murder, Leo Crow (Mike Binder), only because he sees a prevision of him committing the murder. The future event, in this case, causes itself to occur.
This is often referred to as a predestination paradox in time travel and science fiction terminology.
Steven Spielberg's 2002 sci-fi thriller does not itself exist because of anything that came in the 23 years since its release, but it's safe to attribute its existence to the groundwork laid by its predecessors, most obviously The Fugitive (1993), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), and North by Northwest (1959).
Spielberg’s take on a classic plot device is frenetic in the best possible way, from the opening few minutes where we see 2054’s precrime division in action through Cruise’s turbulent chase to clear his name of a crime he hasn’t yet committed. It’s a film that knows what it is and dives in head-first, a credit to Spielberg but also to many of the key figures in making this film what it is, most notably cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, a frequent Spielberg collaborator whose bleached bypass creates the almost dreamlike future we’re thrown into.
And for a Cruise vehicle, a considerable amount of work was put in to surround him with the best possible ensemble. The particular work of Samantha Morton as the key precog, Agatha, and the venerable Max von Sydow as Lamar Burgess are critical to the success of the film in very specific and focused roles.
Minority Report came out when I was 15. It was one of the first DVDs I owned after a summer spent saving up money for my first DVD player. As my love for film grew in my late-teens and early-20s it was a film I looked back at with derision in a very “I only watch indie films such as Pulp Fiction” sort of way. Being a blossoming film snob meant thumbing your nose at big studio blockbusters made by name-brand directors and starring box office sensations.
I’m thankful that in my late-30s I’ve long since grown out of that phase, and this project has helped me revisit films from that period of my life, ones I mistakenly don’t think of as all-timers or classics, but upon rewatching certainly are.