I saw Minority Report during its original theatrical run but not since. If you'd asked me before I popped in the DVD to recount it, I could have reconstructed the basics but not many details. Once I actually started to watch it, though, it all came rushing right back. It's funny how that can happen sometimes.

I hadn't considered it when I saw it the first time, but upon this viewing I see a whole lot of parallels with L.A. Confidential. In fact, I'd say that if someone was into detective/noir films but thought they weren't into sci-fi, this would be a safe bet recommendation. At its core, Minority Report is essentially that kind of film rather than pure sci-fi.

The sci-fi aspects do work well, though, in two respects. One, they service the story. There isn't much of a sense of the film taking place in a sci-fi setting just for the sake of it. Instead, the sci-fi elements are either directly utilized by the characters or they function to establish the setting (or both). One obvious part they missed: Changing John's eyeball security access. That would seem a no-brainer to me.

The lone exception for me is the passage of the film where John is first chased. Everything from his racing through traffic to the fight with the other cops with jetpacks through to the Kawasaki factory just feels incongruous with the rest of the film. That 15-20 minutes feels like a turn-of-the-century video game instead of part of the otherwise cerebral/gritty story being told. Especially conspicuous is that scene in the Kawasaki factory, which plays like a retread of the droid factory scene in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, which came out just a few months before Minority Report.

Even that wasn't as conspicuous, though, as the tooth in the middle of Tom Cruise's upper row. I saw a captioned photo online a while back that pointed it out and said once you've seen it you'll always see it and they were right. How did I miss that all those years?!

Really good science-fiction addresses social and ethical issues. Sometimes it's through allegory, sometimes through conjecture and anticipation of issues that may arise from advancements. Such is the case here. Any number of discussions about the marriage of technology and the justice system can originate from a viewing of Minority Report and that's the hallmark of interesting storytelling.

Less compelling is a discussion of why Burgess became so sloppy after years of having gotten away with the murder of Anne Lively. He kills Witwer and expects to pin it on John? How did he ever get that past the precogs anyway? He says it's because they can't see anything, but what did that mean? How did he know that? Had he sabotaged them somehow? I don't get how that part actually works within the story.

Oh, and that entire eye surgery section, including the mouldy sandwich and milk? You're a mothersmurfer, Steven Spielberg.

Minority Report was re-ranked on my Flickchart to #398/1522