I caught a little of the movie again last night on HBO. Look, I know a lot of people who loved it, but I think the fundamental premise is a bunch of hooey. Just to recap, the film is set in the future in Washington, DC. Tom Cruise basically runs the “Dept. of Pre-Crime.” With the aid of some clairvoyant teens, the police can predict murders before they happen and hence stop them. The program has been so successful, premeditated murders simply don’t happen in Washington anymore because the murderers know they’ll get caught before they do the deed. So the only arrests Cruise and his team make these days are for crimes of passion — husbands who want to kill their wives in a fit of rage after catching them in flagrante with a lover etc. The obvious controversy/concept is that people are being arrested for crimes they haven’t actually committed. Boo hoo, that’s wrong etc.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Cruise’s boss figured out how to rig the system so he could murder someone without getting caught. When Cruise stumbles on this his boss tries to set him up for a murder rap.

Okay, now. When all of this is revealed, they shut down the program entirely. The audience is supposed to understand the rightness and justice of this implicitly. I don’t at all.

Some points:

1) Our current system — which prevents far fewer murders than the one in “Minority Report” — is far, far, far more vulnerable to corruption of this sort. But we don’t simply get rid of it.
2) Spielberg stacks the deck to make the idea of “pre-crime” justice seem more horrible than it is. First of all, he makes the psychic kids into victims. Well, what if they were well-compensated and happy in their work? That doesn’t change the fundamental premise at all, but it takes away the emotional spin Spielberg puts on the idea.
3) Another trick Spielberg uses is to leave it unclear what kind of punishment these would-be murderers get. It seems like they get life sentences or some other horrible punishment indistinguishable from the sort one would get for actually committing murder. But why? Surely we wouldn’t sentence someone to life in prison for almost killing someone in a crime of passion? Wouldn’t we instead offer them something more akin to anger management counseling?
4) The pre-crime system is actually more fair to the “criminals” themselves. Imagine yourself as the would-be murderer. Wouldn’t you prefer to be stopped before you made such a terrible mistake? Wouldn’t you prefer a lighter sentence for almost killing your wife than a lifetime sentence for actually killing her? Indeed, maybe if you were stopped beforehand you might be able to work out your problems.
5) We know from the movie that murders will indeed go up. Wouldn’t this annoy you a great deal if it was your son or wife or brother who was murdered all because we threw away a system was only 99.99% foolproof? Wouldn’t you say “fix the system” if you thought it would protect your loved ones?
6) Lastly, the films makes the point that the murderers can actually be given a choice if they are warned of the premonition in time. Well, fine. Let’s warn would-be murderers instead of throwing them in prison. Let’s put them on probabtion. Whatever. But let’s not throw away a system which protects the freedoms of more people better than any other simply because it seems wrong to arrest people before they do wrong.