Minority Report [Blu-Ray]

As a featurette included with this set makes abundantly clear, seminal sci-fi scribe Philip K. Dick suffered in obscurity during his lifetime, with his fame (and posthumous fortune) coming largely as a result of blockbuster adaptations of his prescient stories released after his death in 1982. Of all these films ― Blade Runner, Total Recall, The Running Man, Screamers, etc. ― Spielberg's explosive adaptation of Dick's story The Minority Report may measure up as the most gentle treatment of the author's futuristic dystopias. The first, and most lucrative partnership between Spielberg and star Tom Cruise, Minority Report expands the scope of Dick's story about a cop on the "Precrime" beat (Cruise), who busts perps before they commit crimes, into a full-blown genre thriller. Though originally conceived as a follow-up to Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi high-fantasy Total Recall (1990), Minority Report has more in common with Ridley Scott's masterful Blade Runner (1982). Both are futuristic neo-noirs (though Report trades in Runner's musky yellows for a more clinical blue patina) set against a backdrop of ubiquitous advertising, and both rely on the technological deconstruction of the image (still photos in Scott's film, moving images here) as the primary means of investigation. And say what you will about Spielberg ― yes, Minority Report contains all the whiz-bang actions sequences and redemptive daddy subtext that have come to distinguish his films ― but he manages to believably humanize Dick's vision, where Scott, Verhoeven and others have adhered too closely to the sneering cynicism that characterizes the source material. Though perhaps a tad overlong, Minority Report holds up surprisingly well, helped as much by strong performances by Cruise and Max Von Sydow (anticipating the grandfatherly schemer he more recently played in Shutter Island) as the beautiful Blu-Ray transfer. A bonus disc is chock full of special features, including a half-hour interview with Spielberg, and featurettes profiling Dick, the idea of "Precrime," and the making-of the film.