I wanna ask those blinded by the special effects or futuristic vision : ’’Can’t you see ? Can’t you see .. the plot !!’’
There are two equal measures to Minority report. The plot on one side and the movie on the other. Now, I do not fell into the minority who could understand the movie AND appreciate the movie-making in one single dose. The first time around, I got awed by the dark post-modern look, vertical freeways, orwellian eye sensors, the spyders and kind of got different pieces of plot floating around my head screaming to be pieced together. So, I had to give it one more try once the DVD came out. And then I knew, I will hit the MS word limit in explaining the plot itself. It is the most underestimated aspect of this movie, atleast here on MS.
So, let me simply tell you the story here. I don’t doubt your intelligence. The humble intention is to let you enjoy the movie freely for the right reasons without being shackled by intricacies of plot and to relieve you of the immense pressure of having to answer ’what was that ?’ to girl-friend/wife as you rush out of theatre ;)
Spoiler Alert! Reading on is your choice !!
Glossary
Pre-crime
is an entirely new idea in crime-fighting to pre-empt the crime BEFORE it happens. Pre-crime is running on testbed in WDC and is poised to go national during the events of film unfolds.
pre-cog
pre-crime rests on three mutant pre-cogs who can foresee the crime. They see it in their head and their visions are captured and used as evidence against the perpetrator.
Minority Report
Sometimes one of the pre-cogs does not agree. (has a different pre-crime vision from other two) This is a close guarded pre-crime secret and the minority report is not even recorded as this will severely question the authenticity of pre-crime concept.
Echo
murders disturb pre-cogs so much that they keep having echo of the same vision. pre-crime techs have been instructed not to record these echoes.
It’s 2054. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) lost his kid and subsequently his marriage fail apart from this loss.
He holds himself responsible for this and his lifes mission is to find his childs abductor/killer.
He is brought into Pre-crime by erstwhile director Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) and eventually replaces him as the director. He becomes it’s major crusader to avenge his spectre of failure and not to let it happen to anyone ever again. Pre-crime is under investigation by Justice dept agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farel) to assure it is fail-safe before it goes national. John is the key here who is absolutely convinced about effectiveness of pre-crime and has this job to convince Danny.
During time of such politicking, John himself gets suspicious about pre-crime when he sees Agatha (Samantha Morton), the pre-cog, constantly having visions of a past murder. This is an aberration as pre-cogs usually envision murders about to happen. The murder in question is of one Anne Lively.
He investigates the files on record for Lively murderer. To his disbelief, Agatha’s record is not stored.
(Ref Glossary: it is a Minority Report)
He tells this to Lamar. Now, Lamar is in BIG trouble as he had murdered Anne.
(Agatha is Anne’s daughter and she wanted to pull Agatha out of pre-crime. So, Lamar plots to murder Agatha and sends out a killer. This very actions trigger pre-cogs to vision the murder and capture the killer before it happens. Lamar then murders Anne the exact same way but that vision is washed off as an echo. But, catch is that Agatha still has THAT vision trapped in her mind so she’s the only evidence to nail Lamar)
Knowing John will now get him, Lamar’s only chance is to set up John for murder. He hires Lowe to act a killer of John’s son. This action sets of a pre-cog chain reaction that culminates into John murdering Lowe. Seeing this vision, John scoots off with pre-crime close to his heels. He has these two Qs to answer : Murder he’s about to commit and Anne Lively murder. From Anne Lively case, he learns about Minority Report and thinks key to his survival is to prove his Minority Report exists and REAL outcome is in Agatha’s head. He abducts Agatha and much to his dismay finds that her vision is in tune with the other .. meaning that he WILL commit the murder. Agatha is desparate to show John the the Anne murder but he ’’can’t see’’
Events unfold into him getting into the same situation pre-cogs visioned, but the very idea of pre-crime starts fast disintegrating from this moment on. He sees his kid’s snap on the scene of crime and figures all out ( how he was set-up to murder Lowe relying on his conviction of pre-crime) So, he arrests Lowe instead (now doubting pre-crime and to avoid being victim of it). The guy kills himself and John is automatically the murderer as recorded by pre-cogs irrespective of actual turn of events and is caught by cops and Agatha is returned to the pre-cog temple. (as per real precog theory, the effect will be the same but as per chaos theory cause chain may get twisted. That is where pre-cog theory fails)
Meanwhile, Danny gets the scent of Anne Lively case and arrives at the same conclusion about Lamar AND pre-crime. When he goes to nab Lamar, Lamar kills him knowing that pre-cogs are out-of-order with Agatha’s abduction.
Now, things reach climactic pace. John’s wife learns the truth and whole pre-crime sides with her to save their boss. Jad (pre-crime tech) relays the Agatha version of Lively murder ’’Live’’ at pre-crime going national ceremony. Lamar is exposed. He’s pre-coged to kill John but kills himself to escape the dishonour.
In effect, we learn that EVERY murder that happened during the events of movie didn’t quite turn the way pre-cogs predicted so the whole programme is called off and John and every other victim is freed.
(cast info from imdb)
All in all, I believe there were NO plot-holes that I could find as many people believe. But, then I was convinced about Mystery Spot, CA too until I learned there is a spate of them all over US !
I read up other MS reviews and found that junta can recounts the events linearly but does not explain how it all makes sense. That leaves a REAL LOT to read between the lines. QED.