As a man of action Anderton only has two modes: act positively or act negatively. With his own eyes, he uncritically prosecutes the work of the Department of Pre-Crime. With Mr. Yakamoto's eyes, he uncritically undoes the work of the Department of Pre-Crime. Missing however, is the 'Minority Report' of the film itself-the whisper of dissent that survives the visual onslaught. The 'moral' of the story is that we need to pay attention to make sure records of dissent are not erased in the interests of efficiency or self-promotion. Yet the film, in its total absence of ambiguity or reflective thinking, preserves no record of its own dissent, of doubting that uncritical action either way might be the wrong way of going about things.
As Stuart Klawans points out in his review of the film in The Nation, films need both sight and sound to make their point. Ironically, for a film named for a verbal 'report,' the soundtrack is disappointing both for what it includes and what it fails to include. The dialogue is, especially when compared to the polish and pyrotechnics of the visuals, banal. The jokes are old. Most importantly, we fail to see or hear any character development -- any men of action turning to reflection or men of reflection forced into action. (I use 'men' unapologetically here. Despite a heroic effort by Samantha Morton to make sense of her role as Agatha, there are no people of either gender, only drafts of character outlines.)
Here we have to stop and compare Minority Report to Blade Runner. Spielberg has clearly watched the latter film closely (as well he might, trying to make a science fiction film noir from a Philip K. Dick story) and he has noticed the central visual theme of the eye. The stunning opening sequence of the smog-ridden Japanized L.A. that opens Blade Runner pulls back to reveal that we have been watching it all in an unidentified eyeball. The void-comp tests that distinguish the replicants from the humans are carried out by placing a lense between the eyes of the tester and the tested, rendering two eyeballs from the two people distorted and magnified. The slowly blinking eye of the owl on the balcony at the Tyrell corporation makes us question how far a replicant robot can succeed as a symbol for wisdom.
In each of the cases in Blade Runner there is a tension: between the murky identity of the mechanized human city and the unidentified eyeball of the human or replicant; between the words of the test and the actions of the eyeball; between the slow symbolism of the context and the wisdom required of the combatants in the Deckard / Batty feud. In Minority Report, there is no tension because the characters have no trajectory, no plot-only a tacked-on storyline about Anderton's dead son and a broken marriage. The references to eyes proliferate beyond their meaning-they end not as a theme or motif, but as a punchline. The film signifies itself as film noir as if film noir is about the clarity of black and white. There is almost no real 'noir'-no shadowy, uncertain darkness sheltered from cues about which actions are right and which are wrong.
Instead of the guile of The Maltese Falcon's cinematography, the logic of Sherlock Holmes or the domestic accuracy of Hercules Poirot, we have the pre-cogs spinning stories, like the detective authors for whom they are named (Agatha for Christie, Dashiell for Hammett, Arthur for Conan Doyle and possibly C. Clarke). But the stories they come up with appear as fragmented pictures that are edited together by a man, Anderton, who cannot see and who does not listen. Often Minority Report, for all of its visual stimulus and political message, felt the same way. For this film to have reached the standards of Blade Runner, or to have even done for civil liberties what Philadelphia did for AIDS or A Beautiful Mind for schizophrenia, Cruise needed someone to talk to, develop with, compete against. Without Batty to chase would Deckard have ever found Rachel or wondered about his own humanity? Without Deckard to save would Batty (or Rutger Hauer) have transcended his own minimal warrior existence with poetic reminiscences about Orion?
Insofar as the film is trying to grab our eyes and make us see Spielberg's one simple truth about the importance of civil liberties, the film is a great success. I would definitely recommend anyone to go and see it once-Spielberg has recovered from AI and made a good science fiction film. In the end though, despite being about sight, insight, and foresight, the vision of Minority Report remains purely superficial. It lacks the depth that it needed to become a classic. The images may change, but nothing really changes under the image. Once you've seen it once you've got the point. See it, but don't buy the video.
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