Blu-ray Review: Minority Report (2002)

The noughties was a slightly disappointing decade for maestro Steven Spielberg; after directing the then-highest-grossing-film-ever in each of the three previous decades (Jaws, E.T. and Jurassic Park), not to mention a string of critically lauded masterpieces, the 2000s saw him lose a little of his mojo. You could put it down simply to age, but the films he did make were never short of energy or filmmaking creativity. Perhaps he was attempting to depart from his image as a conjuror of cinematic fairground rides (an unfair billing even at the start of the decade, with World War 2 brace Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan under his belt). Minority Report was amongst the best of the decade's output for the legendary man: though still some way short of his best, it still contains more than enough excitement and invention to thrill all but the most jaded of cinemagoers.

An adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story (Blade Runner, Total Recall), Minority Report seems perhaps like an ill fit for Spielberg, and it was in fact star Tom Cruise who first brought the project to his director's attention, the pair having been intent on working together for some time (they would go on to make the underrated War of the Worlds too). The story of a near future - 2054 to be precise - where the crime of murder has been eradicated by three clairvoyant savants called Precogs, the film centres on Cruise's John Anderton, an officer in the Precrime Division, who is himself implicated in the future murder of a stranger. It's a neat conceit but one that takes a lot of explaining and exposition to fill in all the quirks, meaning that the film takes a good half hour to really get going.

Indeed, Spielberg's famous knack for precision pacing is slightly skewed here throughout, that sluggish start followed by a burst of exhilarating action (two showpiece sequences are consecutive), followed by another lull, before another superb set-piece (one word: Spyders) and an enjoyably clever, if not quite revelatory, finale. Fortunately this vision of the future is compelling and unique; elements of it manage to be plausible too, though the central concepts remain distinctly the realm of science fiction. Spielberg is assisted by his regular lenser Janusz Kaminski, who gives the film a layer of grain, washed out colours and a distinct blue tinge. It's not always what you'd call eye candy, but it is stylish.

Cruise is his usual intense self, and performs reliably well, though his character is based upon essentially one trait: the fact that his son disappeared from a public swimming pool some years earlier, leaving him estranged from his wife and now a dabbling drug user. Colin Farrell, still during the period when he was billed as the next superstar, basically fulfils the role of Mr. Exposition (he's the new guy who has to get everything explained to him). The most memorable performance is one we see little of for the first two thirds: Samantha Morton, as primary Precog Agatha, is spookily alien yet human, childlike but wiser than any of the other characters - a difficult set of contradictions that Morton pulls off with aplomb.

Indeed the film is a contradiction: a sci-fi thriller which aims for dark places but is at its best during the quality popcorn-munching action sequences, and whose quest for thematic depth and resonance is undermined by its director's reluctance to leave you at all depressed.



Release Information
Country: UK / Region: Free / Version: N/A / Discs: 1 / Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Presentation
This Blu-ray from Fox does not quite gleam as it might. The feature bitrate is a mere half of the Paramount US release, which houses its extras on a second disc. The Fox UK version crams all the same material onto one disc, including several featurettes in HD. Without personally having watched both, it's hard to judge quite how the added compression impacts picture quality, but the overall feeling is that the image is a little soft, with the heavy and deliberate grain sometimes obscuring rather than picking out detail. Still, the intended downcast look is rendered faithfully, and the audio track seems to be the full-fat version: no issues there.

Extras
An ample set, which adds to the already good 2-disc DVD supplements with several more newly produced ones. Being a Spielberg film, there is of course no commentary, but the sheer number of featurettes more than compensates. Everything is covered, from the Philip K. Dick origins to the CGI effects. The only negative is that despite some of the extras being newly assembled, none of them feature newly recorded interviews.



Summary
Lacking the most graceful or efficient storyline, Spielberg nevertheless manages to wrestle Minority Report into something occasionally thrilling and always interesting, with some trademark slick action.