This month, Empire is celebrating the 100 Greatest Movies Of The 21st Century so far – a list voted for by critics and readers alike. In the ‘Where Was…’ series, Empire writers look at the films that somehow missed the cut. Here’s Ian Freer, making the case for Minority Report.
For my money, the director with the most surprising, interesting, diverse run of films in the 21st century is Steven Spielberg. From dark tinged sci-fi (A.I. Artificial Intelligence, War Of The Worlds, Ready Player One) to deep cuts of history (War Horse, Lincoln, Bridge Of Spies, The Post), from action adventures (Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn) to breezy Tom Hanks comedy dramas (Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal), it’s a body of work that seems to have little rhyme or reason, little in the way of thematic continuity or visual consistency. They don’t even have John Williams to unite them. The new century has really seen the filmmaker follow his muse. If you want proof, next up is full-blown musical West Side Story.
Yet all of them course with Spielberg’s cinematic intelligence, wit, brio and commitment to the possibilities of the medium. Which makes it surprising to me that not one Spielberg flick has made Empire’s 100 Greatest Movies Of The 21st Century. So let me remedy that immediately by nominating Minority Report as the one that got away (quite apt for a film about running). This is partly for sentimental reasons (it’s the film that facilitated my first interview with Mr. Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment) and partly because it’s a brilliant example of what Spielberg does better than anyone else: seamless, smartly-constructed set-pieces sewn into breathless but rich stories that make you think and feel in equal measure.
Based on Phillip K. Dick’s 1956 short story The Minority Report, Spielberg’s adaptation is a thriller centred on the idea of a Pre-Crime unit in 2054, headed up by John Anderton (Tom Cruise), that can apprehend perps before they commit their crimes based on the visions of clairvoyants known as Pre-Cogs. When the Pre-Cogs (named Agatha, Arthur and Dashiell after Christie, Conan-Doyle and Hammett) predict Anderton will kill a man he doesn’t know, it sends him on the run to prove his innocence.
As you’d expect from Spielberg, the action sequences are inspired – a car factory fight (including sick sticks that induce instant vomiting), a car chase that sees vehicles shoot up and along buildings and, best of all, a jet pack battle full of bruising action and inventive humour (flying into an apartment, a jet-pack flame grills some burgers). Yet Spielberg and writer Scott Frank also milk the high concept premise for surreal moments (at one point Tom Cruise chases his own eyeballs along a corridor), striking washed out visuals (the opening introduction to Pre-Crime is as abstract and dream-like as anything in Spielberg’s back-catalogue) and stunning tech. Informed by a think tank of scientists, technicians and forward thinkers, Minority Report has taken over Star Trek’s mantle as The Pop Culture Work That Predicts The Future: from driverless motors to gesture-controlled gadgetry to personalised advertising, few sci-fi films have had their fingers more on the pulse of how we life today.
Yet for all its eyes on the future, Minority Report has one foot in the past. The story is a gripping, twisty-turny film noir with all the dark edges the genre implies, anchored by a terrific Tom Cruise as a man haunted by a tragic past. It’s a film that riffs on the battle between free-will and self determinism but wears its ideas lightly. It’s Spielberg at his most brisk and coherent yet contemplative. For this reason, it doesn’t take three bald psychics to see it should have been on the list.
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