I was a little dissappointed by this movie But admittedly I came to it with perhaps too high expectations and in truth I did think it was quite a good film. This post may well contain a few mild SPOILERS!!!

The story was a standard cyberpunkish affair that required very little thought imho, perhaps due to my overfamiliarity with the genre, and I found few surprises along the way. I knew it was based on one of Philip K. Dick's works going in there though. Some of the action though seemed to be a little restained and lacked the urgency that the nature of the film required

I was however very impressed with the "world-building" that had gone on to great the backdrop of the film, the advertising, the distinct socio-economic seperation and the gadgety tech-stuff, all of which are standard cyberpunk fair, but were particularly well done in this case

I normally find Tom Cruise at least watchable and I actually liked him in this film and thought he made at least a semi-convincing Captain Anderton. Max Von Sydow seemed to be almost reprising his role from the "Judge Dredd" movie though, with the spoilerish twist aside, but he does it so well, he's the obvious choice for the role.

I just wonder if there's going to be a different version in a few years time without the narrative at the end, and a sad ending in place of the happy ever after one shown this time round... Somehow with Spielberg at the helm, I think not

I enjoyed this film actually, but then I only ever go to see a film to be entertained. I don't know enough about film criticism to be able to pull it apart fairly, so I won't try.

I especially liked the scene setting with all the cool futuristic stuff... "Welcome back, how are those wool blend tank tops working out for you?" LOL

It made me think of my dad who was dead against any kind of national identity card type thingy - with all the retinal scans and the underground crime that was associated with it was pretty cool.

ALways like Tom Cruise, I could watch him with the sound turned down in pretty much any film quite happily.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT

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by MonSTeR
I just wonder if there's going to be a different version in a few years time without the narrative at the end, and a sad ending in place of the happy ever after one shown this time round... Somehow with Spielberg at the helm, I think not

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Yeh, I know what you mean.
One of the things I like about the film, is that another film can be made just out of the way this film ends, with the pre-cogs now out of service, and the pre-crime division disbanded, then surely it'd only be a matter of time before the murder rate shot up again.
If you'd lived in a society with no murder for 30 years, then all of a sudden that stopped, wouldn't you want to go back to the good old days - even if it was flawed. "The needs of the many outway the needs of the few ...."

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by MonSTeR
I just wonder if there's going to be a different version in a few years time without the narrative at the end, and a sad ending in place of the happy ever after one shown this time round... Somehow with Spielberg at the helm, I think not

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I quite enjoyed the movie. However I thought there were at least two places where the movie could have finished and the final product been a lot better.


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1) The guy in the apartment was actually the guy who killed Cruise's son. Cruise kills him as predicted and is locked up. The audience then leaves the cinema thinking about whether the only reason Cruise ended up killing the guy was because it was foreseen and he went to investigate it, and whether if he hadn't been working for PreCrime the whole thing wouldn't have happened (introducing a whole 'chicken and egg' argument).

alternatively:

2) The film finishes once we find out about Von Sydow's scheme, but without him getting his come-uppance (so the same film but without the happy ending).
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END OF SPOILERS

What do you think?

Well, Spielberg was never going to stick to the Philip K. Dick ending (everyone is dead or at least deeply miserable). But...

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...here's how I thought the film should have ended:

The FBI guy - forget his name - lays out his theory to Ming the Merciless, then Anderton jumps out of the closet, and he and FBI guy arrest Lamarr, because it was a set up with blanks loaded in the pistol, because the fiftieth anniversary holo-chip version of LA Confidential (digitally remastered) is still available and they knew what was coming without recourse to the PreCogs.

This was my big complaint about an otherwise decent film, that there is no reason for the FBI guy to have fallen into this trap, except that Tom Cruise has to be the hero and not him. Not only is the film a play by play repeat of Jack Vincennes fate in LA Confidential, given what the guy had worked out, there should have been no way he wouldn't have sussed it was Lemarr who - with Anderton out of the picture - was pretty much the only one who _could_ be a suspect.

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by DJ Billy
1) The guy in the apartment was actually the guy who killed Cruise's son. Cruise kills him as predicted and is locked up. The audience then leaves the cinema thinking about whether the only reason Cruise ended up killing the guy was because it was foreseen and he went to investigate it, and whether if he hadn't been working for PreCrime the whole thing wouldn't have happened (introducing a whole 'chicken and egg' argument).

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But that was there anyway. It was the only reason Cruise ended up killing him - well, that and the fact that while claiming to be trying to prove his innocence, he actually went out of his way to make sure that it happened, but that follows on from it. It just wasn't the focus of the film.

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2) The film finishes once we find out about Von Sydow's scheme, but without him getting his come-uppance (so the same film but without the happy ending).

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The ending just screamed 'directors cut' at me. I'll be interested to see if there's anything on the DVDs..

The Prophet: well, if they're gonna rip off other films, they may as well be good ones.

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by In a State of Dan
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But that was there anyway. It was the only reason Cruise ended up killing him - well, that and the fact that while claiming to be trying to prove his innocence, he actually went out of his way to make sure that it happened, but that follows on from it. It just wasn't the focus of the film.

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Yeah. I just felt that this was where the film should have finished and that issue should have been the focus. I felt that everything in the movie from the split second when Cruise should have killed the guy onwards betrayed the previous hour and a half of the film.

As an aside. Why was it that in a city where there hasn't been a murder for several years, the guy was so upset Cruise didn't kill him when he should have? Surely he would have expected PreCrime to arrive just before Cruise was due to kill him?

(Edited by DJ Billy 16/07/2002 19:52)

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by DJ Billy
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(quotes)
Yeah. I just felt that this was where the film should have finished and that issue should have been the focus. I felt that everything in the movie from the split second when Cruise should have killed the guy onwards betrayed the previous hour and a half of the film.

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I know what you mean, but (unusually for me) I had guessed that everything that happened up to Cruise finding the guy in the apartment *was* going to happen, I mean it was predictable enough for even me to guess! (This from the girl that didn't get Sixth Sense until right at the very end... :rolleyes

If it had ended there, it would have just been yet another film with a paradox... I'm kinda glad they continued it, even though it was a bit of a lame ending compared to the rest of the film.