SECURITY VS. FREEDOM (cont.):

Blame Runner: Minority Report is a fabulous, witty totalitarian nightmare. (David Edelstein, June 21, 2002, Slate)

For slightly under two hours, Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (DreamWorks/20th Century Fox) is even greater than the sum of its parts'a roller coaster in which the loop-the-loops are philosophical as well as visceral. It's one of the drollest projections of the future ever put on film. The movie is adapted from an early short story by Philip K. Dick; and while it strays from Dick's narrative, it nails the basic premise and some quintessential Dickian motifs. The year is 2054, and in and around Washington, D.C., murder has been eliminated by a private corporation with governmentlike powers of detention. The company, Precrime, has developed technology to tap into the minds of "Pre-Cogs," psychic humans who float in a sort of sacred amniotic pool, their synapses wired to video terminals. What they visualize, and what shows up on screens in the company's control room, are not "thought crimes" but crimes that definitely will be committed.

Sounds invasive, no? Shrewdly, the screenplay (by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen) adds a cliffhanger aspect to engage our sympathies. With crimes of passion, the Pre-Cogs' vision can come mere minutes before a murder is destined to occur, which means a race to discern the location and stop the killing. While his hovercraft SWAT team waits to swoop down on the perpetrator-to-be, the unit chief, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), reviews the Pre-Cogs' tapes on a giant glass screen like some sort of forensic Leonard Bernstein, commanding the computer to shift the grid, try different angles, and zoom in for close-ups. Anderton also has a direct video link to a pair of judges, who by rote give their legal blessing to go forth and apprehend.

I must admit that I find elements of this future attractive?and so, according to Minority Report, does the populace of 2054. A political advertisement for Precrime is stunningly effective: It shows people who would have been murder victims expressing gratitude for their lives. As the movie begins, Precrime is on the verge of a referendum that would make its policies the law of the United States, and a smirky Justice Department honcho called Witwer (Colin Farrell) has arrived to scrutinize the company's inner workings?to ensure that the data that sends would-be culprits into suspended animation for the rest of their lives is reliable. The movie presents us with a classic totalitarian trade-off, upgraded by technology and the paranormal: Would you surrender a slew of civil liberties for a world without crime? Assuming that the right people were always jailed for the right reasons, I'd think about it long and hard.

It's a pretty mediocre, though cool looking movie, saved only by the scene that effectively ruins it (when Spielberg refuses to accept the logical arc of the plot and Philip K. Dick's entire point in the short story). However, Mr. Edelstein here admits precisely what we were talking about below, that a world that was this secure would be sufficiently attractive that it would tempt people to surrender their freedom. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2003 7:39 PM