In Steven Spielberg's second dystopian science-fiction tale in a row, Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, head of the D.C. "Department of Pre-Crime," which has prevented homicides for six years through the exploitation of the "Pre-Cogs," a mysterious trio of seers who can predict the future; or at least one dark part of it. (Samantha Morton plays the most gifted, and she remains one of the great actors of her generation.) Cruise brought Philip K. Dick's short story to Spielberg. "It was a brilliant setup about a future time where murders can be stopped before they happen and future perpetrators are put in prison, which is a complete violation of their civil rights," the 55-year-old director said on a recent trip to Chicago. "Gee, I thought, what kind of country would be so desperate and so afraid that they would give up that much of their personal freedom in order to ensure their personal safety at night from homicide?" The final version of the script, worked over for a couple of years by Scott Frank, is densely plotted. "There aren't a lot of surprises in Philip K. Dick's short story, at least as not as many as we put in. In the area of surprises and feints and red herrings."

The greatest strength of "Minority Report" is that it elaborates Dick's seething paranoia with science fiction's genre conventions, in order to reflect disturbing social themes that are relevant today— privacy, the effects of drug abuse on successive generations, the adult nightmares of the abused and a misguided belief that law enforcement, led by flawed humans, can do no wrong. Spielberg's made a dark but brisk Hitchcock-style wrong-man murder mystery from the ground up, rather than indulging in mere pastiche. Still, he says, "My favorite Hitchcock is 'North by Northwest" in terms of the fact that it was his most commercial adventure film he had made in his life. I couldn't believe he made it. But my favorite Hitchcock film in terms of just sheer brilliance in the craft of storytelling is 'Strangers on a Train.'"

There's a lot of intricate, sophisticated social commentary in this movie, and it's uncertain if the people whose behavior Spielberg's critiquing will even see themselves in it. One scene involves a talking cereal box at the breakfast table. "When Tom had the cereal box in front of him, we had no graphics on it. He had the blue box in front of him. He said, what does the box do? I say, it's like a jingle, eat this cereal, I begin to sing stupid songs to him, and Tom says, 'You know what I would do if this box starting singing, I'd throw this fucking thing across the room!' I said, 'You would? Let it sing a little bit, tap it a couple of times, then throw it across the room.' That's why he does that. It was infuriating, in Tom's imagination, that a breakfast cereal would be talking to him. We're not that far away. The imagineers at all these corporate companies, tennis-shoe companies, cereal companies, lingerie companies, anything, you name it, once they have the technology, they're going to use it. It's like the atomic bomb. If you build that atomic bomb, you're going to have to use it. Once they find out how to use it, I'm going to have my comb talking to me in the morning: 'You're going against the part! Danger Will Robinson!'"

Spielberg goes against the digital grain with his insistence on shooting on film. By 2054, who will have won, Lucas or Spielberg? Digital or film? "I will lose and George will win. By 2054, it will all be digital by then. It will just be inevitable. By the way, I'm not advocating this. Everything I'm saying to you right now, don't say, 'Steven advocates this.' I don't advocate everything that's in 'Minority Report.' Just because I directed a movie doesn't mean I want it to happen. But I think that the convergence of [film and] video games [is the future]: first-person games, first-person shooter games, or at least games where you are able to navigate in an entirely three-dimensional world and decide where to go and when to go and decide when you want the story to be told to you, be in neutral, hanging around, not having anybody tell you a story."

Since Spielberg started working with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, his work has been rougher looking, even sloppy. He points to his experience with "Hook" as where that began. "'Hook,' really, was the slickest movie ever made and the least satisfying, to me, as a filmmaker. I had a chance with that movie to do a breakout new-wave musical and I chose the very safe road. We had eight musical numbers written, I threw out all eight, I canceled it being a musical on the second week of shooting. I already shot one musical number, looked at it, Johnny Williams looked at it, Johnny worked his ass off writing the music for this picture with Leslie Bricusse and we threw the whole score out. Johnny agreed it should be thrown out, he's the one who said, this is not the tempo for a musical, and I made a very conservative movie out of it. I could make 'Hook' the rest of my life, I could be a director for hire and I can go out and make a lot of movies that are entertaining, but play it real safe."

He had one project that he felt had to be made. "'Schindler's List' had been sitting with me for ten years and when I committed, my first promise was to shoot in black-and-white. The second promise was to shoot handheld. My third promise was, be uncompromising in my honesty about the way it really was then. That's what changed my life. The rude awakening with 'Hook' and then the traumatic involvement with 'Schindler's List.' I saw that sometimes not having the slickest dolly track, the smoothest crane shots, like John Farrow and C. B. DeMille and all those amazing glossy painters. Sometimes being rough and honest reaches people deeper because they see an honesty and reality to the imagery, it feels like it's happening to them. I was able to communicate ideas quicker than in the traditional Hollywood standard and style I had been using for so many years."

But would you do a Dogme 95 picture? "No, never! Never!" He laughs. "I want a really good sound man, I want really good lighting and I want a really good bathroom close by. I don't want to have to go to someone's house and knock on the door and ask to go to the bathroom, which in Dogme, you cannot go to a porta-potty. I want some privacy in my life."

Spielberg and company are working in a thriller format, but the underlying issues could be torn from today's op-ed pages. "Civil libertarians could use this as a sort of rallying cry, as you have to understand the dangerous results of losing our personal freedoms, that the end of 'Minority Report,' which we don't want to give away, is all about. So I think John Ashcroft would like the setup, but he wouldn't like the statement that the film makes at the end. Y'know, that to survive as a human race, we can't rely on the [infallibility of others] to solve our problems for us."

So at the White House screening, you could leave off the last reel? He laughs again. "I very much doubt they'll even ask for this picture at the White House. If they do, I'll be happy to send it to them."

"Minority Report" opens June 21.

Also by Ray Pride

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"Windtalkers," the new World War II epic from John Woo, is a broadscale depiction of hand-to-hand combat but also mano-a-mano conflict. (Yes, the love of man for his fellow man once more. If your best friend can't kill you, why die?)
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Jill Sprecher's touching ensemble drama formally resembles a Kubrick film, incorporating his questing intelligence and a great deal more warmth.
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TIP OF THE WEEK
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(2002-06-06)

SHUT THE HELL UP!
Consider the city. It is glory. Man's gift to himself. But it revenges. It cries out at all hours, a machine bleating its distress as it's torn stem to stern. Our stress is its stress, returned tenfold. It lives, thrives, dies, aloud. Those goddamn buses! Are they designed to sound that way, like beasts being torn from a primordial swamp?
(2002-06-06)

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MORAL FEAR
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MOVIE LOVE
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TOUGH "ENOUGH"
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SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: June
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SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: July
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SUMMER FILM PREVIEW 2002: August
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