Pre Crime example essay topic

Set in a surprisingly realistic vision of what Washington, D.C. might look like in 2054, murder is becoming a thing of the past, thanks in part to the work of John Anderton, a detective in Washington D.C.'s Pre-Crime division. It's his job to stop murders before they happen. While the philosophical ramifications of this are interesting, in the logic of the story there is no paradox to convicting someone of a crime they have not committed, however predestined to do so in theory through three pre-cog oracles whose minds hold the key to the future 1. Yet this should come to the viewer as a shocking realisation that this type of control could happen in the near distant future. Anderton and his force spend most of their efforts stopping crimes of passion, those murders that are acts of spontaneity, not long-range planning. Yet what right has anyone got to take away this freedom to express, to experience actions that are infallible to the spontaneous individual of society.

The re occuring theme in "Minority Report" is that if you have not committed a crime then has the crime been committed? The answer to that is that the pre-cogs, three very gifted people, have the ability to read the future of murder. They are able to depict this through electronic state of the art equipment that give the police almost exact details of the murder before it happens. Pre-Crime is doing so well, in fact, that there is talk of making it a national endeavour, to clean up the rest of the United States. As with any political and bureaucratic suggestion, there are those who oppose it, and a representative from the Attorney General's office has come to D.C. to evaluate the program.

When the latest murder suspect name comes up, Anderton is dismayed to learn that it is his own. His decision is clear and pre-determined by his predilection and by the inevitable and invariable implementation of the principle of pre-crime. There is no choice here. It is all rather automatic and biased. Without ever having met the victim before, showing him that he is destined to kill this man in less than 24 hours, Anderton is convinced that someone is trying to ruthlessly set him up.

He must run for his life and determine the truth behind the vision of his own future. With the police suddenly after him, Anderton has no choice but to be a fugitive. While his escape takes him to new heights from the dregs of the slums and back to the upper class world that he lived most of his life. Although the personalised advertising and amazing technology are futuristic, they are so well rooted in our own world that they don't seem that unbelievable. Yet isn't this so often the case? Is this really the absolute height of censorship when any individual can be pin pointed at any given time, when the society is controlled by eye scans?

In theory it could make life easier, yet the civil rights of humanity are breached. It becomes to the extreme when Anderton has to get his eyes removed just to have the chance to try to clear his name. Breaking into the Pre-Crime building, he kidnaps the most talented of the three pre-cogs, Agatha, convinced that what she knows about his future is the key to clearing his name and saving his life. Whatever deep-rooted involvement one might have grown to have in John Anderton's dire predicament proves sterile in a sea of blank faces posing as characters.

Precious little is ever learned about John, except that he blames himself for his son's kidnapping six years ago, is separated from his wife, and has a secret drug problem, and even fewer reasons are given for why we should like or care about him. Not being able to find the heart in John, or anyone else in this story, what surrounds them is a thoroughly unsatisfying emptiness posing as a study of serious-minded issues. The sheer fact that pre-crime was established by deceit in a conspiracy to rid the pre-cogs mothers consent to accept such monstrosity on screen. US Attorney General Vincent Nash puts it so eloquently "we want to make absolute certain that every American can bank on the utter and infallibility of this system and to insure that what keeps us safe, will also keep us free", but does this system really makes us free, is the rights of the individual breached by mass control over our actions through eye scans and brain manipulation.

It is certain that no matter what you say a halo could always be put on your head just because you committed a crime that hasn't taken place yet. Minority Report (2002) Reviews web.