I know originality is a precious commodity to come by these days, but I hoped that at least Spielberg would have been able to muster some and not just mimic other movies. He tried hard but there were definite touches of The Matrix, Robocop, Total Recall, The Terminator, The Fugitive and also every other Spielberg movie. I appreciate how hard it must have been to make a satisfactory adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel and I was also impressed that we didn’t simply get Blade Runner 2. Many Directors find it hard to make a futuristic film without showing off every cool idea they had and often forget to tell a story, lost in their own inventiveness. Spielberg did this a little with A.I and got carried away with the robots and his own imagination. So it is good to see that Minority Report uses its setting to good effect but does not go overboard with it and manages to be a Crime/ Sci Fi movie rather than just a Sci Fi.

Spielberg is of course no stranger to Sci Fi (E.T, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park) but approaches it for the first time in a more imaginative way with more Verhoeven gadgets and in a less pompous and prissy way. Speaking as a teenage boy; it was just more enjoyable than his past efforts and felt as though he set out to please his audience rather than lecture them sentimentally as he did in A.I and E.T. It had the excitement necessary to attract younger thrill seeking audiences and didn’t become boring when the action stopped. Speaking as an adult; it had none of the loathsome sanctimonious crap that E.T did (sorry but the sentiment is thicker than treacle). Minority Report should attract an adult audience as well as a teenage one because it has a definite human side to it and any adult who shies away from the action packed trailers should not be fooled. It is not some dumb action cliché packed blockbuster with plenty of explosions and shootouts (actually there aren’t any at all), it has constant tension and thrills but never patronises and never sinks into standard Sci Fi set pieces. Adults who feel this is the wrong movie for them are mistaken and should remember that the Ad makers didn’t make the film and that naturally the Ad is meant to appeal to the people most likely to be taken in by the promise of Spielberg, Cruise and action; teenagers. So the film is actually totally different to what adverts would have you believe, whether you want to see the film actually depends on whether you like Thrillers and Sci Fi which are the primary ingredients.

Being a Spielberg film it is obviously more complicated than the initial premise and soon the plot becomes a tangled mass of criss crossing events. Also as it is a Spielberg film it is annoyingly drenched in the trademark hazy sunlight that always seems to invade Spielbergs films. On the plus side there is only a little sentiment which is necessary and not a repeat of the cheesiness of A.I. It has none of the coldness either that the end of A.I did and it seems that Spielberg has finally learnt to balance emotions without patronising or draining his audience. It still has the odd glitch though where the scriptwriter got his own way, such as the ludicrous sequence where Cruise chases his own eyes and where Spielberg throws in a gag for the under eights and has Cruise eating mouldy food and sour milk before spitting it out. Parts like this didn’t go well the adult tone and it was disappointing to see such a great film succumb to cheap laughs. Luckily, there are no bad points that can significantly lower the brilliance of the film which has so many great aspects and redeeming features.