Minority Report

Washington, DC, 2054: a city without murder for six years, thanks to the Pre-Crime unit's use of evidence foreseen by three psychic Pre-Cogs to track, arrest and lock up the 'killers' just before the act. The unit's chief, Anderton (Cruise), has his own reasons for supporting the scheme and its advocate Burgess (von Sydow) against sceptics like Witwer (Farrell), sent by the Attorney General to see if the nation should adopt the city's policy. But then something makes Anderton think again: during transmission of a stranger's imminent death, he recognises the killer - himself. Can Pre-Cogs be wrong? Hopes were high for Spielberg's film, adapted from a Philip K Dick story and blessed with a top technical crew and hot actors to bolster Tom. The first hour is promising. Despite ostentatious, obfuscating gadgetry, jargon and product placement; it's fairly persuasive as a future-projection. But thereafter ideas are mostly cast aside so that Cruise can run, leap, kick ass and look anxious but determined as clichés multiply around him. The fashionably fussy, funky veneer may convince some that the film's serious, but it's finally another chase pic, murky in detail, muddled in ideology and strangely predictable in dramatic thrust.