Film of the book: ‘Minority Report’ (2002)

An action-packed and entertainingly silly movie based on a long short story ‘The Minority Report’ by Philip K Dick which was first published in 1956. The concept of the story is great, but the film is overrated and suffers from Spielberg sentimentality which doesn’t suit the darker implications of the ideas. The film’s plot is also stuffed with improbable coincidences. The concept of both is that John Anderton is the head of Precrime, a department which arrests people before they commit crime, but on the arrival of Witwer, an inspector, Anderton is predicted to murder a man and is forced to choose whether to fulfil the prophecy and prove that his system works, or not commit the murder and potentially cause anarchy.

Some of the changes and additions make sense. Giving John Anderton a background as a divorced father guilty over losing his son and a reason to murder the man he is predicted to. Anderton in the book is described as an old man and even smokes a pipe, so making him a younger action hero was definitely a smart move. Humanising the pre-cogs, the three people whose role is to predict crime (their names are changed from Donna, Jerry and Mike, to Agatha, Arthur and Dashiell) was also obvious. The author describes them as ‘mutant pre-cogs’ and ‘idiots’ who spout ‘gibberish’, while in the film they are intelligent and Agatha (who can speak English) is given a major role in helping Anderton change his fate and in helping solve an unrelated murder which profoundly affected her. The traumatic effects of the pre-cogs replaying memories of murders are also hinted at. What is weird is that the name of a predicted murder victim is on a coloured wooden ball which rolls down the tube. This is hardly cutting-edge technology for the year 2054. The book is decidedly 20th century in its technology – the pre-cogs’ predictions are on tape and cards, for example – but the film, made and set in the 21st century, has no such excuse. They have sophisticated computers, holograms and spybots, so why the wooden balls?

The film looks good, with a cool blue-silver palette and excellent CGI for the time. The actors’ performances are great, including Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, as there are comedy moments, such as the big chase when Anderton is outsmarting his own team of cops who are after him on jetpacks. There are two things I really don’t like about the film. One is the gross scene when Anderton gets his eyeballs replaced so that he can’t be scanned and identified, but luckily he gets to keep his old eyes in a little bag so he can hold them up to the scanner when he breaks into the Precrime offices later. The other thing I don’t like is the simplistic happy ending. Not only are the divorced couple brought back together, they are expecting a baby. Precrime is abolished and everyone is let out of jail. The pre-cogs lead peaceful lives in a rural cottage. Although the film includes typical Philip K Dick themes – drugs, paranoia, police state – the conclusion is really not like a Philip K Dick story.

Image attribution sourced from Wikipedia: the poster art can or could be obtained from IMP Awards, fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4411352