Quick rundown of the plot: Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, works for a division of the police known as Precrime. Using technology that takes advantage of some psychically gifted children, they use it to arrest people for murders before they get the chance to actually commit them. Everything turns upside down though when Anderton’s name comes up as someone about to commit a murder even though he has no motive to do so; he becomes a fugitive and attempts to clear his name by finding something called a minority report, a rare occurrence that could prove his innocence.
One of the questions raised by the movie (and works as a great thought experiment) is if it’s morally okay to actually arrest people for what they’re supposedly going to do, despite it not actually happening. Depending on the predictions made by the psychic children, an arrest could potentially happen hours or even days beforehand. In certain situations, like one right at the beginning of the movie, it’s evident that someone may be about to go through with the crime. But in the case of someone like Anderton, he didn’t even know the man he was “supposed” to kill. Being on the Precrime team, he knows what could happen if he were to get caught. What would happen, though, if he literally just stayed at home until the predicted time, minding his own business? Can he still be charged with something he was supposed to have done, even though he didn’t do it? How fair is it to judge someone like that? Is it fair at all? Who has the right to call those kinds of shots? For a crime thriller, it does give the opportunity for the viewer to ponder that moral dilemma – not something you get a whole lot out of movies these days.
Marshall's Matters 