HOLLYWOOD - What's more intriguing than the sight of Tom Cruise pulling a Yul Brynner? Perhaps only the prospect of Steven Spielberg orchestrating the shaving of Cruise's head.One of the world's most bankable stars joins forces with the most successful director in movie history for Minority Report, a futuristic thriller based on a story by famed sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick. That alone should result in one of the biggest openings of 2002 for a film that is not a sequel or based on a TV show or comic book.
This long-gestating collaboration finds police chief Cruise relying upon telepathic technology to bust would-be killers before they can perpetrate their heinous crimes. Cruise, though, comes under investigation for a murder he will apparently commit.
Minority Report should give Cruise and Spielberg something to cheer about following their respective disappointments last year.
Vanilla Sky, a nonsensical remake of Open Your Eyes, survived scathing reviews to reach a solid but unspectacular $101 million solely on the strength of Cruise's enduring appeal and his on-screen trysts with new love Penelope Cruz.
Warner Bros.' incapability to effectively market A.I.: Artificial Intelligence cost Spielberg dearly at the box office. Was it a sentimental fairy tale about an android boy yearning to be a human? Or an adult Pinocchio envisioned by the late Stanley Kubrick and realized by Spielberg? With no answer forthcoming, A.I. blew a fuse at $78.6 million.
Opening at about 3,000 theaters, Minority Report should debut closer to Cruise's Interview With the Vampire ($36 million) than Spielberg's Jurassic Park ($47 million). Minority Report's ominous tone is more in keeping with the Gothic bloodletting of Interview With the Vampire than the CGI-fueled thrill ride that was Jurassic Park, which arrived in 1993 as the must-see blockbuster of that summer.
With Cruise and Spielberg calling the shots, Minority Report has what it takes to best 1990's Total Recall ($119.3 million), Arnold Schwarzenegger's take on Dick's We Can Remember it Wholesale for You. Minority Report also should ease the suffering inflicted upon Dick devotees this year by Impostor ($6.1 million).
The possibility of Minority Report becoming one of Cruise or Spielberg's biggest smashes, though, seems remote. Cruise is the only draw for women otherwise uninterested in a futuristic cat-and-mouse game between a cop on the run and his former colleagues. Cruise's appeal with women goes a long way, but not far enough to turn such tricky prospects as Eyes Wide Shut ($55.6 million) and Magnolia ($22.4 million) into hits.
Regardless, Minority Report will serve as America's proper introduction to Colin Farrell. Hailed as the next big thing after the unseen Tigerland, the Irish actor later endured the bombs American Outlaws ($13.2 million) and Hart's War ($19 million). Farrell replaced Matt Damon, who dropped out as the cop chasing Cruise because of a schedule conflict with Ocean's Eleven. Farrell's presence in Minority Report will doubtless help the fate of his Phone Booth, a thriller due Nov. 15.