I was once told that writing a good story is markedly different from writing good literature. Case in point: the prolific Stephen King has written many insidious novels without ever having produced a great piece of literature. This truism can be extended to film. There are directors who tell great stories and there are directors who make great films. Spielberg falls into the former category, captivating audiences -- since the mid-seventies release of Jaws -- with adventure tales featuring unlikely heroes -- a reserved archaeologist (Indiana Jones), a curious electrician (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), an unassuming child (E.T.) -- redefining the commercial blockbuster in the process. Ignoring his "serious" works, Spielberg is a masterful storyteller, often adopting a fairy tale sensibility and consequently a fairy tale morality in his stories. It is this approach, combined with a child-like adoration of Kubrick, that spawned the lugubrious A.I. With Minority Report however, Spielberg seems to be atoning for his most recent sin -- believing he could fill the shoes of the great filmmaker Kubrick -- with doing what he does best, telling a story, and telling it well.
Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, head detective of the newest crime fighting division of the D.C. police department, Pre Crime. Some time in the near future genetically altered orphans have been given the gift of seeing the future. Their talents are exploited by the police in order to capture murderers before they commit their immutable crimes. When Pre Crime is placed under national scrutiny because of a possible Federal initiative, John Anderton finds himself in the middle of a cover up that may make him one of Pre Crime's many martyrs.
Kubrick's influence on Spielberg cannot be denied. It reverberates throughout Minority Report. Crisp lighting and cold, stark interiors color the entire film. His heavy handed approach to color and lighting, that felt so overbearing and overly dramatic in Amistad, fits the futuristic setting well, complimenting the meticulous detail of future technology. But the style of the film does not feel derivative of the world Spielberg created in A.I. It is more familiar, with its ubiquitous GAPs and pestering advertising. Spielberg strikes a balance between the cold sterility of technology and the warm feeling of a world people actually inhabit. In this way, he separates himself from Kubrick, who often alienated one with his cold, sterile settings that reeked of his neurotic attention to detail.
Like any good sci-fi movie, Minority Report raises any number of important moral and ethical questions. But Spielberg hastens to answer them without giving the audience the opportunity to make up their own minds. This is vintage Spielberg: tell a story that instantly maps onto our contemporary understanding of moral ideas. Or better yet, give the commercial audience answers to hard questions in a context where they can be easily swallowed without much introspection. Basically, the issue of arresting alleged criminals before they have committed any transgression is a major moral dilemma. Yet one finds Spielberg concentrating on the development of the plot, rather than on these moral questions. And quite honestly, I do not blame him. He is not Kubrick. He has never sought to make his audience uncomfortable, to alienate them from their social mores; rather, he gives their fantasies the manufactured normalcy they yearn for when they go to the movies. That will be part of Spielberg's legacy. He was the people's director, the silicon grandfather who nurtured our fantasies with a well told bed time story.
Minority Report is thus representative of the best Spielberg has to offer. It's captivating, exciting, intriguing, interesting enough to give one the illusion of philosophy, yet not thought provoking enough to truly warrant serious introspection. It is the quintessential American sci-fi fantasy
