Minority Report remains one of Spielberg’s loftiest films to date. As to who is trying to set up Anderton and why, I’ll leave that for you to discover. But when Anderton doesn’t pull the trigger to kill him, Crow reveals he was paid to pose as Sean’s kidnapper in an attempt to incite Anderton to murder. Crow is in possession of dozens of photographs of children, including Anderton’s missing son Sean. The story reaches its climax as the 36-hour window winds down and Anderton and Agatha come face to face with Leo Crow. As an aside, note that all three Precogs are named after famous crime fiction authors - Arthur (Conan Doyle), Dashiell (Hammett), and Agatha (Christie). These alternate futures are discarded as “minority reports” and kept under wraps as it would endanger Precrime’s credibility.Ĭonvinced that he must have a minority report, Anderton returns to Precrime HQ and kidnaps Agatha (Samantha Morton), the most talented of the three Precogs, in hopes that she can prove his innocence. In fact, the Precogs can sometimes disagree about their visions, seeing possible alternate futures. But Hineman reveals that Precrime is not perfect as many believe it to be. The Precogs were just children at the time and tormented by visions of death and brutality, trying to understand what it was they were seeing. This sends Witwer and all of Precrime on a wild manhunt for Anderton, who knows every move his former coworkers will make – this, of course, leads to some eye-catching sequences of Anderton making narrow escapes, avoiding eye scanners, and temporarily turning his face into a wrinkly mush.ĭetermined to prove his own innocence and that he will not murder Crow, a man he has never met, Anderton seeks the help of Precrime’s accidental creator, Dr. The twist…Anderton is the one who is supposed to murder him. A man named Leo Crow will be murdered in 36 hours.
While Witwer is auditing Precrime, the Precogs make a new prediction. The government is considering taking Precrime national, so Witwer is tasked with finding flaws - and if there are any flaws, he philosophically tells Anderton, they’re bound to be human. Department of Justice sends in Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) to investigate Precrime from top to bottom, its practices, principles, employees, everything. Matters become complicated though when the U.S. It is up to Anderton and his tactical team then to discover the location of the murders and preemptively arrest the would-be perpetrators. These Precogs are the children of drug addicts and only a few were able to survive childhood one of the side effects they suffer from is the ability to sense and see murder(ers), as murder is more destructive to the human fabric than any other deed. The key is the Precogs, a trio of human beings housed in a nutrient-rich liquid. Precrime is a police division that exists for that very purpose, to prevent crimes before they happen. His son was kidnapped at a public pool, divorce and drugs ensued, and he could only cope by enlisting in Precrime and preventing similar tragedies from happening. Six years previously, Anderton’s life fell apart. Department of Precrime, Precrime Captain John Anderton (Tom Cruise), his mentor/Precrime Director Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow), and the three Precogs who we’ll discuss in a bit. It’s 2045 and Washington, D.C., has not seen a murder in over six years. And that’s precisely the conundrum in Stephen Spielberg’s neo-noir crime thriller, Minority Report. Now continue to keep your hands in the air if you are willing to seize three humans and turn them into homicide alarm clocks just so long as you stay safe. I can see one or two hands faltering (you’re asking yourselves: how much privacy, exactly?), but ultimately the extreme good still outweighs the intrusion.
Now keep your hands raised if you’re willing to give up some of your privacy in exchange for a murder rate of zero. Raise your hand if you would be in favor of a world without murder.