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The
Minority Report and Other Classic Stories
by Philip K. Dick, James Jr. Triptree
Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his
life in California. The author of thirty-six novels, including the
acclaimed Blade Runner, and five short story collections, he won
a Hugo Award for The Man in the High Castle, and a John W. Campbell
Memorial Award for Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. He died in
1982.
In
the world of The Minority Report, Commissioner John Anderton is
the one to thank for the lack of crime. He is the originator of
the Precrime System, which uses "precogs"–people
with the power to see into the future–to identify criminals
before they can do any harm. Unfortunately for Anderton, his precogs
perceive him as the next criminal. But Anderton knows he has never
contemplated such a thing, and this knowledge proves the precogs
are fallible. Now, whichever way he turns, Anderton is doomed–unless
he can find the precogs's "Minority Report"–the
dissenting voice that represents his one hope of getting at the
truth in time to save himself from his own system.
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The
Minority Report is clearly Spielberg?s best, most thoughtful picture
since Schindler?s List and Saving
Private Ryan. Based on a short story by science fiction writer
Philip K. Dick, it is set in the Washington, D.C. of 2054 where
for the past six years the police have been able to prevent murders
through the use of a trio of ?Pre-Cogs?: pre-cognitive people who
receive visions of future murders. The three, a woman and two men,
are kept in a clover-leaf shaped pod filled with water and are tended
by a somewhat neurotic technician whose sole qualification for the
job seems to be that he is very nurturing. The Pre-Cogs fragmentary
visions of future crimes are displayed onto computer screens and
downloaded into the department?s crime computer for analysis.
 John
Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the captain of the Pre-Cog unit, and it
is he who manipulates the images through the not entirely convincing
method of ?conducting? the images on glass displays with cyber-gloves.
Elements of doubt and interpretation are part of the process because
accurate conclusions are dependent on the skill of the officer analyzing
the ?evidence,? and also because the visions can have a ?dissenting?
component of only two Pre-Cogs predicting the same future, with
the third filing a ?Minority Report.?
 Anderton
joined the force six years before, motivated by the unsolved kidnapping
of his young son, and struggles with feelings of guilt, revenge
and hatred. He has been separated from his wife for six months (can
so many sixes be coincidental?) and has become addicted to the drug
?Clarity? for relief from his inner demons. In other words, he has
sufficient ?character motivation? for us to believe that he believes
in what he is doing.
 The
movie is a visual delight, but to this point it lacks a compelling
catalyst to drive the narrative. The catalyst arrives in the form
of Colin Farrell, a Brad Pitt look-alike who steals nearly every
scene as Detective Ed Witwer, a Justice Department official suspicious
of the Pre-Cog operation and who aggressively investigates it to
test its fitness for nation-wide application. Even in his scenes
with the charismatic Cruise, Farrell comes off as a strong foil
and I think it has to do with his body language. Cruise stands or
stares in conventional fashion in their confrontations, but Farrel
slumps, looks sidelong, glances from beneath his eyebrows and adopts
similar tropes in a manner that is convincing and highly personal.
His is a discordant personality, dressed in a dark suit, scruffy-looking,
like a Type-A Columbo who, ironically, is determined to find something
wrong where nothing yet wrong exists, much like the work of the
Pre-Cog unit itself.
 The
film?s visual constructions of the future are for the most part
convincing and far superior in integration to laughable efforts
such as that seen in the recent Star
Wars offering. But in the best of films, it is character not
action that drives a viewer?s interest, and the movie rides the
successful chemistry of the antagonism between Cruise and Farrell?s
characters.
Philosophically,
the movie will intrigue both Christians and non-Christians for its
presentation of the free will vs. determinism
debate (which will always be with us), whose resolution (not coincidentally,
I think) depends on the identical arguments used to argue both sides
of the current capital punishment controversy.
Politically,
the movie can easily be read as coming heavily down on one side
of that argument and it does so by venturing into surprising, theological
grounds. The area where the Pre-Cogs are kept is referred to as
?The Temple?; the police officers are called ?priests?
and ?clergy?; the punishment chamber
for the future murderers is called a kind of ?hell?;
and the ?handcuffs? are an immobilizing headset which is referred
to as a ?halo.? Moreover, there are
three Pre-Cogs (constituting a kind of trinity)
and the warden of the ?death penalty? wing is called Gideon.
Make of the last what you can. In the composition of these elements,
the movie is clearly making a value judgment of epistemological
systems and their believers. As a Christian, I conclude that it
is not, shall we say, sympathetic to Christianity in its metaphysical
or temporal forms, but viewers should decide for themselves.
 Interestingly,
it is the female, Agatha, that is the most accurate of the three
Pre-Cogs, and whether it is coincidence or not, her name means
?good? in Greek. Much like the character of Trinity breathes
new life to Neo in The Matrix, it is she
who guides Anderton to his spiritual awakening and recovery. Similarly,
the characters of Morpheus and Neo in The Matrix
are interchangeable, just as the male twins are interchangeable
in the Minority Report, predictably casting the woman as the nurturing,
life-giving force.
 While
containing the inevitable Spielberg sentimentality, the film?s conclusion
argues for forgiveness over revenge,
for mercy over justice, and for free
will over determinism without being lugubrious. Literally
and metaphorically, the film makes the argument that new
eyes make for a new perspective and is a clever polemic which
will both entertain and provoke the viewer to think about metaphysical,
philosophical, and political issues which have been and always will
be important to our culture and to our faith.
In
his lesser films, Spielberg often took the opportunity of making
sly digs at Christianity and it will be interesting to see if after
the welcome hiatus of Schindler's List and Saving
Private Ryan, in which Christianity was portrayed with some
complexity and even sympathy, whether Minority Report augurs a return
for him to the culture wars of our time. A.I.
was a two-headed abomination as both art and political polemic but
with Minority Report he has a classic sci-fi hit that successfully
crafts a powerful argument about contemporary issues.
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