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Stephen Spielberg's Minority Report

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Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, based off Phillip K. Dick’s short story, takes place in the year 2054 and centers around a crime prevention program pilot-tested in Washington, D.C. by the “pre-crime division” of the police force. With crime rates down 90%, the prevention program has proven to be extremely successful; however, in a world of pre-punishment the question remains: is it possible to treat someone in a certain way because of what they may do in the future, even if it hasn’t occurred yet?
This film begins with three mutant “pre-cogs” with the ability to predict the mindset and actions of future murderers with 99% accuracy. Occasionally, however, the pre-cogs do not all predict the same outcome, with one pre-cog predicting a dissenting future from the other two – this discrepancy is recorded …show more content…

This investigation is spearheaded by Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) who realizes that this deterministic approach to crime, negating the offenders free will in the process of committing a crime, is not necessarily engraved in stone. The head of the Pre-Crime department, John Anderton (Tom Cruise), rolls a ball off a desk which is caught by Witwer before it can fall onto the ground. Anderton asks Witwer why he caught the ball, to which he responds, “Because it would have fallen off the desk.” Anderton retorts that by Witwers logic, there is not definitive proof that the ball would have indeed rolled off the table despite Witwers prediction. Nevertheless, he asserts that such is the case of the Pre-Crime system which knows “beyond reasonable doubt” that the would-be criminals would become criminals. Consequentially, the central concern surrounding the plot is that of “pre-punishment” in which would-be criminals are pre-punished for crimes which they have yet to commit, but presumable

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