Minority Report is the most underrated movie ever to have a 90% Rottentomatoes score with a $350 million worldwide box office haul. For some reason, not enough people give this movie credit and I’m not sure why. It’s a visual marvel from top to bottom, the blending of the core sci-fi and detective elements were perfectly calibrated by screenwriters Scott Frank and Jon Coen, you got a terrific Tom “Movie Star” Cruise performance before he truly went off the Xenu deep-end, the supporting cast were all outstanding, Janusz Kaminski’s glassy-smeary-amazing cinematography looks beyond sharp and high-contrasty in the luscious blu-ray format, and the score from John Williams was one of his most unsung and propulsive. The vision of the future that this film painted felt tangible and realistic and it’s funny how some of the technology that the source material and film would go on to predict is eerily prescient. Like the best neo-noir science fiction hybrids (Dark City also comes to mind), Minority Report knows exactly when to riff on genre while simultaneously inventing its own set of rules and aesthetic guidelines that helped to turn it into one of Steven Spielberg’s most thoughtful blockbusters, a film with as many ideas as it does breathtaking action scenes. The production design in the film is truly extraordinary, and the mostly seamless visual effects compliment and heighten the narrative rather than overpower it with needless bombast. The jet pack chase and fight with Cruise battling it out with the various agents and crashing through the apartment complex is pure BEARD POWER, with visual humor to punctuate the seriousness of the situation, while always exhibiting a childlike sense of wonder and mentality that anything is possible. And even if the ending still needed some extra tweaking (I think another 20 minutes was warranted), this is one of those consistently smashing entertainments that pushed the boundaries of the PG-13 rating, telling an adult story that asked you to use your brain in order to figure out all of the exciting pieces.
Podcasting Them Softly 