Minority Report

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

This is the kind of pure entertainment that, in its fullness and generosity, feels almost classic.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

May show both director and star working at their professional peaks, but I don't think it's as good as that underappreciated masterwork "A.I." It's not as resonant and daring, not as full of magic and marvel. Spielberg stretches himself technically here but not emotionally.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This film is such a virtuoso high-wire act, daring so much, achieving it with such grace and skill. Minority Report reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A heart-pounding experience that makes you think and contains a gallery of characters that will haunt your nightmares for years to come.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

It affirms that, even in the 2000s, movies do not have to be brain-dead to be exciting. When the season is over, Minority Report will more than likely stand out as the best picture to grace multiplex screens during the Summer of 2002.

USA Today Mike Clark

Stripped of all bravado, Cruise delivers a raw and probably detractor-proof performance. Spielberg does what he did right in creating a novel milieu for "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," but this time the writing is fresher and anything but unwieldy.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

A happy surprise: a timely antidote to the comic-book mindlessness of "Spider-Man" and repetitive space fantasy of "Star Wars," and an encouraging bid from the top of the A-list to once again reach very high and spit in the face of the gutless formula filmmaking that rules Hollywood.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

The casting of Minority Report may be the smartest in the history of Spielberg. [1 July 2002, p. 96]

Film Threat Clint Morris

Where Minority Report succeeds is by dishing up a little bit of everything – to see no one leaves the theater disgruntled. There are helpings of science fiction marvel, there’s some interminable tension and a real human story underneath it all. The specials effects are damn impressive to boot.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Terrifically entertaining specimen of Spielbergian sci-fi, incomparably better than "A.I." and as dark a movie as the director has made since "Schindler's List."

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Few directors are capable of marrying ideas and entertainment—one is often sacrificed for the other—but Spielberg peppers one gripping action setpiece after another with trenchant details about a near-future robbed of the most basic freedoms and privacy.

Time Richard Corliss

Spielberg's sharpest, brawniest, most bustling entertainment since "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and the finest of the season's action epics.

Newsweek David Ansen

Ferociously intense, furiously kinetic, it’s expressionist film noir science fiction that, like all good sci-fi, peers into the future to shed light on the present.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

It's a dark and dazzling spectacle.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

This is a fiendishly complicated whodunit -- or, to be more precise, a who-done-what-to-whom-and-when -- told within the confines of thoughtful, speculative science-fiction.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The film moves swiftly and unerringly to its conclusion. Spielberg remains under Stanley Kubrick's directorial spell.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

The most compelling question dangling at its end is, "Didn't Steven Spielberg used to know how to bring a movie to an end?"

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Spielberg takes assured control. In his hands, Minority Report is a classy, chilly quasi-Hitchcockian affair.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The first 20 minutes are masterful, as Cruise hunts down a killer-to-be; the last 20 are mediocre, as screenwriters Scott Frank and Jon Cohen untangle the mystery they've grafted onto Dick's story. In between lies a conventional but expertly realized cop-on-the-run drama.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Spielberg's dark side may not be where everyone wants to live, but it's somehow encouraging to know that he has one.

Variety Todd McCarthy

May be a shade too serious and contemplative to completely enchant the thrill-seeking masses, while simultaneously seeming too mainstream-minded and genre-bound to be entirely embraced by highbrows.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It's not the crowning achievement in Steven Spielberg's oeuvre, but Minority Report stands on its own sturdy sci-fi legs, and there's no sign of that little imp Haley Joel Osment, to boot, thankfully.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The mechanical beauty and android possibilities of the future excite the filmmaker, and that's where Minority Report becomes an alluring postcard from the edge. But it's an edge over which Spielberg never seems to want to step.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Its most vivid scenes -- a visit with an insane ophthalmologist, a showdown at Anderton's supposed crime scene -- have the kind of anything-goes creativity that set "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" apart from the crowd last year.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Cruise will never be a master thespian, but there's no one better at putting across the charisma of control, and the opening sequence of ''Report'' is an astonishingly fluid demonstration of his gifts.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Taut entertainment that juggles brainy ideas about perception, predetermination and free will - and drops things in a messy third act where the vintage noir gets bathed in a bit too much Spielbergian glow.

Slate David Edelstein

Whose idea was it to turn Minority Report into a mushy declaration of humanism? It ends up as less of a warning about an Orwellian police state than a protest that Pre-Cogs are people, too. It's Dick-less.

New Times (L.A.) Robert Wilonsky

Can barely move during its final half hour, which is a shame, because until then it's a frenetic, engaging ride -- a huge grin, not unlike the one Tom Cruise now hides behind his grownup's braces.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Though he can still deliver an amazing scare, Mr. Spielberg's interest now leans more toward exposition rather than the anticipatory. He is explaining the fun away.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

One of the glummest and most forbidding thrillers ever.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

It's not the kind of work that wins awards, but without Cruise's intensity almost willing our interest in Spielberg's unrelentingly dark world, Minority Report wouldn't have nearly as much life as it does.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

We'll never know what might have been, as eye candy and food for thought replace real thrills in the cool but cold Minority Report.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

By turns silly and amazing, a mishmash of Kubrickian devices accompanied by a steady Spielbergian drip of sentimentality.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

More humdrum than horrible. It isn't futuristic film noir; it's just everyday film beige.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Miscast, misguided, and often nonsensical, Minority Report is nevertheless the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg has made in the decade since "Jurassic Park."

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Though his movie wraps challenging ideas and ingenious visual conceits in a futurist film-noir style, it's pretentious, didactic and intentionally but mercilessly bleak in ways that classic noir never was.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

Give Steven Spielberg some dinosaurs or a cute, funny alien and he'll spin populist sci-fi till the Arcturan cows come home. Give him a philosophical story about technology changing what it means to live in this world and he'll craft a hodgepodge of shallow and unexplored ideas.