Minority Report

Minority Report (2002), directed by Stephen Spielberg, stars Tom Cruise, as John, amidst a futuristic society that looses sight of choice and instead relies only on factual and logical predictions in order to prevent future crimes.  When a detective comes in to question the legitimacy and accuracy of the system, John throws a ball at him.  When the detective catches it he makes the point that just because the ball didn't fall doesn't mean it wouldn't.  The Precrime Unit of the Police force acts as the person catching the ball; preventing the inevitable.

Before a turn of events that imply doubt to the system, John along with those who run the system, believe entirely in the Precogs; the humans that are linked to machinery which projects their thought and future murders on the screen.  The Precogs are viewed as certain kind of gods and those controlling them view their work as sacred and perfect.  John and his teammates are often shot from low angles to imply superiority and confidence.  During the viewing of future murders, John stands confidently before the screens, efficiently putting the pieces together in order to go out and prevent murders.  The juxtaposition of the classical music playing and the swift, fluent camera movements represents the calm confidence in the system as well as emphasizing the efficiency and accuracy of the system itself; or so society believes. 

As the film progresses doubt begins to overshadow the system and as predicted, nothing but human flaw causes a system, built by humanity itself, to fail.  This time around when the Precogs predict a murder that none other than John himself is supposed to commit, John panics dropping the accusing ball.  The ball as seen before is a symbol of the contradiction between perfection and human nature and how the two can never actually meet but only mirror each other.  John realizes along his journey that a ball can indeed fall due to gravity.  But other forces can change the direction of the fall.  This being said, human nature allows choice to factor in.  Nothing is set in stone which is why the future itself will always remain unpredictable and ever changing. 

Last, the lighting remains extremely back lit which floods the background silhouetting the subjects upfront.  Sometimes characters, such as John or the Precogs themselves appear to have halos around them emphasizing the divinity related to the system.  The darkness of many scenes mirror the dark waters this prediction based system treads in. 

Unfortunately, though the overall idea of the film was interesting, I found it to be unnecessarily drawn out and not cohesively edited between action scenes and dialogs.