Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise seem like a natural team, and they finally proved it in 2002 with the release of Minority Report, a movie that, is it just me, or has it aged rather well? It blended weird moral and philosophical questions with gripping action and conspiracy the way only a Philip K. Dick adaptation can. It’s yet another guy-at-the-end-of-his-rope role for Cruise. But in this pattern we’re able to identify, it’s noteworthy that a) he’s able to pull it off time and time again, combining an ability to make action incredibly gripping and intense, enhancing the experience for the audience just with his presence and energy; and b) that he makes the occasional divergence and pulls it off in a big way.
So in Minority Report we get a bit of everything from Cruise, from the tenderness he shows he pre-cog played by Samantha Morton, to the rivalry with fellow officer played by Neal McDonough, to the cat and mouse game he plays with Colin Farrell. What we’re left with is quintessential Cruise: delivering a fine enough performance to make the character and story believable, but not upstaging the story, and in this case, the moral quandaries at the heart of that story that is the real source of discussion for people after they’ve seen it. John Anderton isn’t the most memorable hero but his part in a fantastic movie is memorable in its own right.
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