| In Minority Report director Stephen Spielberg brings to the screen a 1956 sci-fi short story by Philip K. Dick that is his what he calls his “ugliest, dirtiest movie.” The year is 2054, six years into an elaborate experimental program operated in the District of Columbia to fight violent crime before murders are committed, using the powers of premonition of three psychics who are held in a water tank against their will. All those arrested are placed in a state of suspended animation, since they cannot be charged in court with actually having committed a crime. Police Chief Paul Anderton (played by Tom Cruise) joined the Department of Precrime, as the program is named, at the inception in 2048 upon the death of his precious six-year-old son. Because not a single murder has been committed during the six-year trial, Director Lamar Burgess (played by Max Von Sydow) is eager for a nationalization of the program, but Danny Witwer (played by Colin Farrell) is on the premises of the facility when the film begins to make inquiries on behalf of the Attorney General of the United States. Presumably, Burgess will lose his chance for fame and fortune if the federal government nationalizes his crimefighting program. To demonstrate how the system works, we view how one murder is foreseen and prevented in the early part of the film. However, soon thereafter Anderton is disturbed to learn that he has been identified as the next killer, so he does everything that he can to evade pursuit and capture, including kidnapping Agatha (played by Samantha Morton), the key psychic, who tells him that all three psychics fingered him; there was no minority report, as when only two of the three sometimes might see the same vision. Eventually, Anderton is arrested, but not without planting a seed of doubt about Burgess’s integrity in the mind of key researcher Iris Hineman (played by Lois Smith), who later rescues him in order to expose Burgess for murdering Agatha’s mother and then covering up the crime. Accordingly, after all the sound and fury of hi-tech gadgetry and surveillance overkill, the Department of Precrime is abolished, and all those formerly arrested are released though kept under surveillance. Yet while most filmviewers will be transfixed by the special effects razzle-dazzle, the concept of a Department of Precrime is not really science fiction any more. The current effort to prevent acts of terrorism clearly involves a precrime scenario. Similar to Minority Report, the accused are being locked up, in some cases with no expectation of a speedy trial. But unlike Minority Report, the evidence against them could be unsubstantiated rumor. Democratic due process, in other words, takes a back seat to national security. MH |