(reviewed at KOP with Jack on Tuesday, July 2nd, 2002)
They were known as the Film School Gang. Nowadays, going to film school is about as Republican as wearing a suit and tie to High School. It’s for the nerds, the losers. Why waste your money and time when you can hit one out of the park for $7,000 bucks like Robert Rodriguez did? Or max out your credit cards to make a movie and become a star with a hot wife like Kevin Smith? Why waste your time at film school? It’s so…late 60’s.
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg went to film school and came out of Hollywood in the 1970’s as Kings. They rode on silver horses and walked on rose petals. They made classic epics like The Godfather and Star Wars and Jaws. They had everything. Sadly, twenty plus years later, in the year 2002, people are scratching their heads and wondering, “What went wrong?”
Francis Ford Coppola’s last good movie was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and before that it was Apocalypse Now, which came out in 1979. George Lucas’ last good movie he directed came out in 1977. Steven Spielberg made two great movies in 1993, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, and followed those up with his awesome WWII picture, Saving Private Ryan. But after A.I. and The Phantom Menace (and Coppola’s last picture, Jack), we move into the year 2002 wondering if they still got it. Can they still surprise us? Can they still awe us? Can they still get the job done? Have they gone soft? Is it over?
Sadly, it seems so.
Attack of the Clones reinforced the depressing idea that The Phantom (Disappointment) Menace delivered. George Lucas was once a good filmmaker, but not anymore. Clones was all special f/x and no heart. The movie was silly, laughably dull, and preposterous. It was more a soulless roller coaster ride than a thrilling popcorn adventure. And with Steven Spielberg’s monstrously awful Minority Report, it seems that the Film School Gang has lost touch with the art that they had once mastered. The year 2002 has become the Year That the Good Directors Went Bad.
Minority Report is a sci-fi picture loosely based on a story by Philip K. Dick, who brought us the ideas behind Blade Runner and Total Recall. The premise is a solid and interesting one, the script on the other hand, is just below riotously bad.
The story goes like this: in the year 2054 (yeah, right…in fifty years cars will drive up walls and cereal boxes will be printed in moving animation?), pre-crime has become the hottest thing in Washington, D.C. The cops can predict the future. That said, murderers will be caught and arrested and sent to prison before they ever do the deed. Tom Cruise runs the project, and he’s the one who’ll arrest you right before you plunge that sharp knife into your adulterous wife. He’ll say, “You are arrested for the future murder of so and so.” But I didn’t do anything! you’ll scream. Tough luck. But it is right? What if it’s wrong? What if you grew a conscience? These are the “big” answers of the film, but most of these questions are bogged down in silly sci-fi chase sequences and a plot that goes south the longer the film is running.
If you haven’t seen the previews, then you don’t know that yes, Tom Cruise finds out that he is going to murder someone in the future. So he runs away and tries to find out the truth. Granted, this all sounds good on paper, and the movie is interesting for a few split seconds, but whomever wrote this script should be commited. What could have been a great movie (and the ideas and story is there) ends up being a laughably silly, suprisingly awful film that ends with you, the viewer, saying, “That movie sucked.”
Yes, they fucked up a perfectly good idea. They went too far. They ruined it. The kings of popcorn, and Spielberg himself, ruined it. If this movie had been an independent, it would have worked. They would have dealt with it specially, and they wouldn’t have added the crowd pleasing non-amusing licks that Spielberg has that take away all seriousness this film attempts to deliver.
Tom Cruise, as John Anderton, is nothing special in this movie. He basically plays Tom Cruise, which isn’t a stretch. Collin Ferrel, who was great in Tigerland, should focus on only doing sequels to Tigerland. His character has no weight. One minute he’s an evil sunuvabitch, the next he’s the guy next door. He reads his lines like they’re on a cue card. And Max Von Sydow’s character shouldn’t even be in the script!
The special f/x are nothing special, and by now we realize that 99.9% of all special f/x look fake anyway. The action sequences made me wonder if Spielberg had anything to do with the ballistic, balls to the wall carnage in Saving Private Ryan. The action sequences blow! Tom Cruise delivers a shallow line like, “I’m going to run.” Then he runs around in the future and Spielberg adds some humorous elements like a black kid playing a sax and some upsidedown yoga instructors and the audience is like, “What the fuck?” Is this movie supposed to be serious? Then why is the guy from Fargo playing someone from a bad David Lynch rip-off?
Minority Report is all over the map. It goes from engaging to preposterous to silly to plain dumb to plain awful to get me outta the theater. It seems that they just threw everything into a pot and stirred it up without thinking. The last half an hour of this film actually is worse than the last half hour of A.I. After every good thing the film sets up, it shatters them and ruins everything with a popcorn blueprint that made me wish someone other than Spielberg had made this picture. He ruined it. He took a good idea and set it ablaze.
There is one four star scene in this muddled mess, however. Just as there are good scenes in both Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones (and in Jack…okay, just kidding). Tom Cruise holds a female close to him. Their eyes are looking opposite ways, but the camera frames them perfectly so that you can read both of their emotions. The room is dark, but you can read their eyes. Perfect, elegant, serene.
Minority Report is a big disappointment. Although going with any summer film, it fits almost to a T. The majority of summer films are all disappointments. They’re silly and dumb and you want a good ride but the car just can’t get out of the station. You can taste the hill and the drops and the loops and see the careening vortex and camel back hump, but you’ll never get that far You’re stuck, and it is over.
Spielberg, I’m sorry, but your reign as a good director has come to a close. Go direct Indiana Jones 4, and leave the bold, new ideas to the fresh fishes at Sundance. You had a good run, now go walk into the sunset. It’s over. Goodnight. *
