(rated PG-13, 2 hrs. 20 mins.)
Imagine a world without crime? The year is 2054, Washington D.C. The new judicial system arrests killers and convicts them before they commit murder. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) heads this “Pre-Crime” unit until the tables turn and he is on a ticking clock to prove his own innocence. Part “Bladerunner” – part Kubrick (eye-ball sort of thing), director Steven Spielberg must have been doing drugs in trying to sell an audience on this high tech plot that weaves a missing kid sub-story to draw on some lame, crutch, sympathy from the audience. The industrial-cold images fight the intended underdog scenario so that we care less about the victims, but instead focus on the crime fighters. And, the crime-fighters deliver such a complicated story, the audience is truly lost. Cruise (post “Vanilla Sky” “Eyes Wide Shut”) needed a hit, and this isn’t it, though he’s at home in this futuristic “Mission Impossible” role. Colin Farrell succeeds as the nemesis colleague. Max Von Sydow is well cast as the inventor of crime, Director Burgess, but its Neal McDonough as Gordon Fletcher, one of the buff sidekicks, that steals the screen. However, if there were such a thing as pre-crime, we’d have been saved from falling victim to this entire movie.
