Minority Report (2002)

In director Steven Spielberg's futuristic, who-dun-it sci-fi, action and detective crime-thriller (and innocent man-on-the-run chase film) that also presented the philosophical debate between fate and free will - it was based on the 1956 short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick (with a screenplay by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen). The film was successful financially and critically, with one Academy Award nomination (Best Sound Editing), and on a budget of $102 million, it brought in revenue of $132 million (domestic) and $358.3 million (worldwide).

The film's major concept was that advanced Precrime law enforcement with its headquarters in Washington, DC was in effect in the dystopian year of 2054; using three psychic 'precogs' lying in flotation tanks with their brains wire-connected to computers, they helped to pre-visualize, forecast or envision future heinous crimes (in order to prevent their occurrence). The complete irony and twist in the film's conclusion was that the Pre-crime's corrupt founder, although minimizing murders, had been upholding and reinforcing the deeply flawed division by his own ruthless and diabolical murderous impulses. Another of the tech noir film's incredible production design elements was the prescient idea that hologram-advertisements flashed in shopping malls that were specially-tailored to each person due to casual, public retinal scanning and tracking.

• in the film's opening set in the DC headquarters of the prototypical Department of Pre-crime - in the year 2054, predictions or prophesies were being delivered by 'pre-cogs' who were submerged in water, including from a very fragile and talented female Pre-cog named Agatha (Samantha Morton) and two twin boys Arthur and Dashiell (Michael and Matthew Dickman); the pre-cogs were able to see impending future murders and help deter crime (however, they could not see assaults, rapes, or suicides)
• the first images of the film were of the latest double homicide murder prediction by the pre-cog 'surrogate detective' Agatha, with one word: "MURDER"; the creation of a "red ball" from her machine indicated that her vision was of a 'crime of passion' that was not pre-meditated; the two Victims were identified as Sarah Marks (Ashley Crow) and Donald Dubin (Joel Gretsch), and the Perpetrator was Howard Marks (Arye Gross)
• once he arrived for work in his high-tech office at the Dept. of Pre-crime, competent and ambitious DC lead enforcement officer-cop John Anderton (Tom Cruise) was notified by African-American co-worker Jad Watson (Steve Harris) of the most recent pre-crime that had identified both the Perpetrator and the two Victims; it was specified that the murder would occur 24 minutes into the future at 8:04 am
• Anderton inserted a small disc into a high-tech Pre-vision player to screen the technological projection of the murder on a Pre-vision screen and interface system; with a special eyepiece and finger gloves, he used mid-air gesture controls (similar to a symphony conductor) to manipulate and interact with the flashing computer images of the Pre-cogs fragmentary visions, to try and locate where the murder was going to happen

Pre-Crime Cop John Anderton (Tom Cruise)
	At a Pre-vision Computer, Anderton Used Gesture Controls to Manipulate the Images and Gather Information

• during the technological projection of the murder, Anderton watched as the suspect husband Howard Marks spoke to his wife Sarah in the kitchen of their suburban DC brownstone; he had just surveilled a suspicious individual in the park across the street as he picked up his newspaper, then entered his kitchen where his wife was cooking breakfast while their son (Andrew Sandler) was using a pair of scissors at the table to cut out eye holes in a picture of Abraham Lincoln's face to create a mask for a school project

US Dept. of Justice Agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) Observing the Pre-crime Division

Pre-crime Cop Gordon "Fletch" Fletcher (Neal McDonough) Explaining Pre-crime Concepts to Agent Witwer

• in the midst of frantic efforts to detect the location of the Marks' home and prevent the crime before it occurred, fastidious and observant US Dept. of Justice agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) was taking a tour of the facility while in the midst of conducting a division-wide audit of the Pre-crime Department before it was to be voted upon, to decide whether it should be spread nationwide; he was present in the room and watching Anderton; it was explained to him by another Pre-crime cop Gordon "Fletch" Fletcher (Neal McDonough) that although Pre-cogs could normally predict crimes 4 days in advance, a non-premeditated "crime of passion" (marked with the "red ball") was much more challenging, and usually couldn't provide sufficient lead time to apprehend the criminal
• once Anderton determined the location of the murder itself - in a brownstone home across from Barnaby Woods Park in Georgetown (identified by its unique merry-go-round in the play area), he had only 10 minutes left to get to the crime's location with his team; they donned their uniforms, entered a hovership to take them there, and then once they arrived, they would have to trace the exact location of the assailant

The Prevention of the Pre-vision Murder in the Marks' Bedroom
Hovership Landing in Georgetown Area Park	Howard Confronting Wife and Dubin in Bed	Anderton Preventing the Stabbing Murder

• after leaving the house, husband Howard Marks stood behind a tree and watched as the individual named Donald Dubin from the park entered his house to have sex with his adulterous wife Sarah in the upstairs bedroom; he grabbed the pair of scissors from the kitchen table and proceeded to the upstairs bedroom to sit next to the bed; behind him, the cheating pair entered and flopped onto the bed and began to have sex
• Anderton and his team of cops arrived at the park and with just about a minute to spare, determined the suspect's specific lookalike brownstone house (with an ajar front door), entered the home, and stopped Marks from committing a "future murder"; the other Pre-Crime cops descended from the Hovership and dropped straight into the upper bedroom from the overhead skylight to assist; Marks was positively identified by an iris scan and promptly arrested, and a metal halo was placed on his head
• back at the HQs, Witwer noticed that the "Pre-cogs" in their flotation tanks were seen flinching in reaction to the actual murder, although it was explained by Jad that they were only experiencing "Pre-cog deja vu" or an "echo" image and that the murder had indeed been prevented; Jad ordered the erasure of the false incoming data [Note: This provided a crucial clue for a later development in the film.]
• a public service announcement with testimonials about the benefits of Pre-crime was projected on large screens throughout DC one dark rainy night as Anderton jogged by; the PSA touted its early successes in its first six years: ("Imagine a world without murder. Just 6 years ago, the homicidal rate in this country had reached epidemic proportions. It seemed that only a miracle could stop the bloodshed, but instead of one miracle, we were given three - the pre-cognitives. Within just one month under the Pre-crime program, the murder rate in the District of Columbia was reduced 90 percent...Within a year, Pre-crime effectively stopped murder in our nation's capital...and now Pre-crime can work for you "); the visuals promoted voting "Yes" on the National Pre-crime Initiative on Tuesday, April 22nd to expand the division nationwide; part of the PSA featured the department's founder Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow) who boasted about how Pre-crime for six years had prevented all murders after the department had been created and how he was very proud of its legacy
• during his run, Anderton was stopped by a voice from the dark shadows, from his blind drug dealer Lycon (David Stifel) - with blank eye sockets, who offered him a "new and improved kind of Clarity" - a futuristic escapist drug; Anderton bought some tiny black inhalers as Lycon wished him: "Sweet dreams, Chief...In the land of the blind, the one eyed-man is King"

Pictures of Anderton's Past Life Before His Son Sean Was Kidnapped and Murdered

• Anderton returned in his hovercar to his futuristic, unkempt apartment where he lived alone; framed pictures were displayed of him with his son Sean along a counter; he deposited some of his drug inhalers in the kitchen, then placed his gun under his pillow; next to his bed was another picture of his son with newspaper clippings, revealing he had been collecting articles about hopeful cases of kidnapped or missing children who had been returned home unharmed, often after a few years in captivity; he perused an accordian-filing system of catalogued home discs-videos of his family life, with chronologically-ordered labels such as Sean at Home Playing with Toys, Sean's 4th and 5th Birthdays, Sean at the Beach, Sean and Lara, and Christmas 53; he picked out one old video disc to plug into his computer as he chugged directly from a box of Pine & Oats cereal

3-D Holographic Images of His Past Family Life With a Wife and Son

• as he took a hit from one of his black inhalers of the hallucinogenic illegal substance, he watched huge 3-D holographic projected images of his son Sean from the "Sean at the Beach" disc, and advised his boy to keep his knees up: "See, you're a natural runner...you gotta keep running...I think you'll beat me someday, I think you'll beat everyone some day"; secondly, he played the disc labeled "Lara and John" - a record of his filming of his wife Lara Clarke (Kathryn Morris) who was flirtatiously wearing a white coat over a flimsy negligee and asking him to put the camera down: ("Put the camera down or you're not getting anything tonight") - the file abruptly ended
• without exposition, Anderton was revealed to be psychologically-depressed and grieving the loss of his family life, and he appeared deeply haunted by his past; living alone in his apartment (without Lara or his son Sean), he was suffering from drug addiction (to a futuristic escapist drug such as "New Clarity" that he had recently bought), and was medicating himself and wallowing in mental distress by watching old home videos-movies of his family life; he was also still obsessively searching for clues to solve his son's kidnapping-murder
• at work in the HQs of the Pre-crime unit the next morning, after an eye-scan at the front door's entrance cleared him, Anderton met with the charming and respectable director of the Pre-crime unit - his paternalistic boss Lamar Burgess, who was worried that Pre-crime's future was in jeopardy in one week's time, due to a "vote on whether or not what we've been doing down here has been some noble-minded enterprise or a chance to change the way this country fights crime"; the suspicious Burgess urged Anderton to "watch this Danny Witwer" who was conducting an audit and working in advance of a decision about whether the division would be expanded or not; he feared that Witwer could endanger the program's future, and added: "If there's any problem, make sure we know about it first"
• in another part of the building, DOJ agent Witwer was discussing the premise behind Pre-crime with Jad, Fletcher and Knott (Patrick Kilpatrick) and asking questions; Witwer stated how predictive technologies were either inaccurate or unlawful, and was skeptical that Pre-cogs were never wrong about the future; he was openly suspicious of the whole theory behind the organization - the idea that the free will of individuals was actually predictable and could be predetermined and anticipated, including the arrest of individuals before they had broken any laws: ("We are arresting individuals who've broken no law.... It's not the future if you stop it, isn't that a fundamental paradox?"); he also asked about "false positives" (an intention to kill someone, for example); Anderton entered the conversation and answered his question: ("The Pre-cogs don't see what you intend to do, only what you will do"); Fletcher then added that as a result, they could not see rapes, assaults or suicides
• Witwer was disallowed from taking a tour of the Pre-cog tank environment (known as the Temple); the area was considered off-limits to the Pre-crime cops: ("We keep strict separation so that no one can be accused of tampering"); however, Witwer produced a search warrant issued by the Attorney General to allow entrance; Anderton and three other Pre-crime cops accompanied Witwer into the Temple area where the Pre-cogs were in flotation tanks, and they met their Caretaker, Norbert "Wally" Wallace (Daniel London); Wally explained that the three Pre-Cogs were sleeping and suspended while floating in photon milk that acted as both a nutrient supply and a liquid conductor, to make their transmitted images stronger ("We see what they see")
• Witwer mentioned to Anderton how he believed that their pre-cognition was miraculous, in that they were godlike and could change destiny: ("Science has stolen most of our miracles. In a way, they give us of hope of the existence of the divine. I find it interesting that some people have begun to deify the Pre-cogs"), although Anderton defended the process as purely scientific: ("Pre-cogs are pattern recognition filters, that's all"); before leaving, Witwer agreed that the system was "perfect" since there hadn't been a murder in six years, but that he was looking instead for any human flaws: "Perfect. I agree. But if there's a flaw, it's human. It always is"
• left alone with the Pre-cogs, Anderton waved his hand above Pre-cog Agatha, and she suddenly lunged at him and grabbed his arm, pulled him closer to cling to him, and asked directly into his ear: "Can you see?"; as he looked up at the ceiling's video screen, he saw projected images of a nightmarish pre-vision memory-recording of a murder; a masked individual attacked a woman in a wooded area, and attempted to drown her in a body of water; Wally was understandably shaken by the incident, and hypothesized: "Sometimes they dream about the old murders"

The Pre-Vision Memory Agatha Shared with Anderton - A White Woman Being Drowned by a Masked Man

• to learn more about how the Pre-crime division and the organization functioned, the curious Anderton met with Gideon (Tim Blake Nelson) who served as the facility's prison guard or "sentry" in the main control center of the Department of Containment located in the basement; Gideon was responsible for watching over the arrested pre-crime prisoners; he was seated before a large pipe organ playing music to relax them
• Anderton asked Gideon for help in further investigating and identifying the attempted drowning murder of a female Caucasian he had just witnessed on the ceiling with Agatha; Gideon played back recordings of 'murders by drowning' and Anderton found one that matched; Gideon described it as one of the department's earliest and oldest cases: ("She's a golden oldie, one of our first, probably before your time"); they viewed the "official composite of the three precogs...a combined data stream based on all three previsions"
• in the facility, Gideon revealed that the incarcerated, inert and detained (and electrically comatose) "haloed" pre-criminals (BEFORE they had committed any crimes) were locked up in vertical floating capsules; he pushed a button and the prisoners' pods rose up around the perimeter of the platform of the Control Center; Gideon noted: "And to think they'd all be out there killing people if it wasn't for you"

Prisoners Were Comatose and Placed in Vertical Floating Capsules in the Department of Containment

• Gideon focused in on one capsule - the one of the pre-murderer of neuroin-addicted mother Anne Lively (Jessica Harper) at Roland Lake; he noted that the killer was labeled as an unknown "John Doe" who was never identified; as with all prisoners, each one was positioned in front of a screen that continuously played the Precog's pre-vision of the murder for which they had been convicted; Anderton realized that John Doe's screen was playing the same video of the drowning woman he had seen with Agatha; Anderton asked why the prisoner hadn't been ID'd from the eye scan; Gideon explained that the prisoner had swapped out his eyes to fool the scanners

The Pre-Murderer of Anne Lively

Gideon Looking Up Information on Anne Lively - It was MISSING

Gideon to Anderton: "Careful, Chief. You dig up the past, all you get is dirty"

• when Gideon went searching for just Agatha's pre-vision, it was revealed that there was no data stream in Agatha's premonition about the murder: ("Huh?! We don't seem to have her data"); it was very unusual that of the three Pre-cogs, Agatha's pre-vision was the only one that was missing, and he speculated: "It's probably just a glitch"; Anderton learned that the intended victim Anne had entered rehab to rehabilitate and reform herself at the Beaton Clinic from her neuroin addition, but there was no further information about her whereabouts after her death had been prevented - the file read MISSING; Anderton took an illegal copy of the machine's video data file about the Lively case with him (although it was against the rules); Gideon warned: "Careful, Chief. You dig up the past, all you get is dirty"
• in Burgess' home, Anderton questioned Lamar about the missing Anne Lively data; Burgess diverted the discussion to his concern about Anderton's hinted-at drug habit and use (and his suspicious late night jogs), and his ex-wife Lara's concerns about him; and then, he stressed his primary interest in maintaining control of the division once it went national; he mentioned that if the department had been active at the time of his son Sean's disappearance, the boy would have been saved, and Anderton's personal pain wouldn't have occurred: ("My father once said to me: 'You don't choose the things you believe in. They choose you'. There's a reason you're here, John. Had Pre-crime been in place just six months earlier, the loss you and Lara suffered would have been prevented"); Anderton vowed to his mentor: "They're not gonna take it away from us. I won't let them"
• Anderton was unaware that Witwer was searching his apartment and found evidence of his inhalers and drug usage; when he returned to the office, the next Pre-crime revealed by Agatha in the analytical room was signaled by a "brown ball" dropping from the machine (meaning it was pre-meditated); in front of his visualizing computer screen, Anderton gathered Agatha's pre-vision data about the violent murder of Leo Crow (Mike Binder) in 36 hours; he saw a tall building, an old lady smoking a pipe, and a "third party" man wearing sunglasses just outside a window; he was completely stunned to see himself as the next predicted murderer - a major plot twist; he was forecast to commit the future killing of someone he hadn't even met; he frantically and repeatedly watched Pre-vision footage of his gunshot that propelled Crow out the skyscraper window: ("Goodbye, Crow!")
• before he fled from the facility and an alarm sounded, Anderton shared an elevator ride with Witwer who claimed Anderton was in a lot of "trouble" - he threatened Anderton with the loss of his job and six months in jail for possession of drugs (the "flaw" in the system); after being "tagged" by the Pre-cogs, as Anderton drove off from the HQs building, he phoned Burgess to accuse Witwer of framing him for the crime; Burgess pleaded ignorance, and urged Anderton to not flee, but Anderton ignored the advice, broke out of his locked-down, mag-lev vehicle, and escaped by jumping from one vehicle on the smoothly-flowing highway to another; he made a suicidal leap into a building and crashed into a room with contortionists doing exercises; Anderton also traversed through a shopping mall's lobby with billboard-sized holographic visual ads that identified him by name, and took a Metro train, alerting surveillance authorities and the Precrime officers to his whereabouts

Anderton's Stroll Through a Mall, With Customized Ads Tailored to Him Due to Retinal Scans

• during Anderton's dramatic manhunt-chase and flight from Pre-crime officers in hoversuits, including Fletcher with Witwer, when told to halt as he exited the Metro, Anderton ran off, and when surrounded, he told Fletcher: "Everybody runs, Fletch!" as the officers with "vomit sticks" and non-lethal sonic blast guns approached to "halo" him; he escaped up a fire escape on the side of a brick apartment building, fought off pursuit on the side of the building, and flew off by hanging onto the back of officer Knott's hoversuit while managing its controls; after crashing into several occupied apartment dwellings, he knocked out Knott and eventually ended up in an industrial warehouse - an automated Lexus assembly plant; he was pursued by a second group of officers led by Witwer, and after a dangerous, one-on-one fist-fight against Witwer amidst moving pieces of laser welding equipment, Anderton was able to get away by driving off in a sleek red Lexus 2054 EV fresh off the assembly line
• Anderton drove out of the city to the rural Maryland residence of eccentric geneticist Dr. Iris Hineman (Lois Smith); her property was surrounded by a rock wall and threatening vines; he met up with Hineman in her greenhouse after being scratched by one of her poisonous vines designed to prevent trespassers, and she was forced to provide an antidote; to his surprise, she knew who he was, prompting him to avow: "I'm not a killer!"
• Dr. Hineman had no answer to his question about how a pre-vision might be faked; she explained how she had done research that resulted in "unintended consequences" - the eventual establishment of the Pre-crime division; she described how the discovery of the Pre-cogs' abilities was a total accident; all of them were the "innocent" children ("genetic mistakes") of parents addicted to the earliest impure form of the drug neuroin over 10 years earlier; she told how most of the children died from brain damage, but just a few survived who had developed the "gift" (or "cosmic joke") of prophetic dreams - of murder, that were now being used to stop the guilty; Hineman had developed the Pre-cogs system and pioneered the interface, while Burgess had instituted the Department of Pre-crime after receiving a federal grant in the year 2046

Anderton Incapacitated at the Vine-Surrounded Rural Residence of Dr. Iris Hineman (Lois Smith)

• John was mostly worried about the accusation that he was the next murderer, and that he had never met his victim: ("I'm not going to commit murder"); she told him that his fate was essentially sealed and that she couldn't help him: "And yet, a chain of events has started, a chain that will lead you inexorably to his murder"; she added: "The Pre-cogs are never wrong. But, occasionally, they do disagree"; Dr. Hineman startled him with the fact that sometimes there were discrepancies between the visions of the three Pre-cogs when, every once in a while, they disagreed with each other; she told how the data from those ambiguous cases (known as a "minority report") was instantly purged from the official record (to maintain the illusion of the Pre-cogs' fallibility, and to avoid creating doubt), and that Burgess knew about these unusual instances; Anderton worried that he had "put away" and "haloed" some pre-criminals who actually were innocent and had "alternate futures"; she hinted that she hoped that the Pre-crime division would be shown to be imperfect and might collapse
• Anderton was encouraged to seek out and find his "minority report"; Dr. Hineman offered him wise advice to trust no one: "You shouldn't trust anyone. Certainly not the Attorney General who just wants it all for himself, and not the young Federal agent, who wants your job. Not even the old man who just wants to hang on to what he created. Don't trust anyone. Just find the Minority Report"; she clarified to him with a whispered clue that the record of the "minority report" was always destroyed, yet "the original report still exists" (the undeclared report was designed to be retained in the "safest place" possible - "inside the Pre-cog who predicted it", presumably in the female Agatha who was "the more gifted of the three"); she kissed him and added: "All you have to do is download it, darling"
• Anderton was incredulous with this new bit of information: "That's all, huh? Just walk right into Pre-crime, get in the Temple, somehow tap into these Pre-cogs, and then download this Minority Report...and then walk out"; she hinted that he might have to alter his retinas to avoid the city's ubiquitous retinal scanners and insure his own "survival": "Sometimes in order to see the light, you have to risk the dark"
• Anderton visited the makeshift, grubby medical office of questionable, underground surgeon Dr. Solomon P. Eddie (Peter Stormare) in a flophouse hotel to have him perform eye transplant surgery, although he became justifiably worried when under anesthesia that the doctor might be vengeful (Anderton had arrested and imprisoned Eddie when he was a quack plastic surgeon in Baltimore and had set fire to his patients) [Note: The scene paid homage to the Ludovico Treatment conditioning sequence in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.]
• meanwhile, Witwer visited with Anderton's estranged wife Lara at her Chesapeake Bay lakefront beach cottage - she hadn't seen her husband in two years; although Witwer tried to have her confess that John was the cause of all their marital issues (his persistent doping, drug use and addiction, his lack of responsibility in the death of their son, his suicidal impulses, and his workaholic obsession at Pre-crime), she defended John and didn't blame him for all the tragic accidents that had happened to them; she explained her departure from the marriage was due to persistent reminders of their lost child ("I left him because every time I looked at him, I saw my son")
• following successful eye surgery, Anderton was instructed to remain in the medical room for 12 hours, and to not remove the thick bandages from his eyes until he had recovered or otherwise he might go blind; he was drugged with neuroin and after taking a hit from a black inhaler, he began dreaming about his son Sean's sudden disappearance at a very crowded public swimming pool while Anderton was demonstrating how to hold his breath underwater; he awoke from the nightmare and mistakenly ate outdated greenish moldy food and drank sour milk from a refrigerator while a video screen in the room was broadcasting his impending arrest on a live feed of the Fox-TV show Cops

Anderton Recuperating From Eye Replacement Surgery	Dreaming of His Son Sean at Swimming Pool
Anderton Mistakenly Reaching For a Moldy Sandwich	A Live Broadcast of His Own Arrest Playing in the Background

• in a very suspenseful and scary sequence, a Pre-crime hovership led by Fletcher (and Knott) was maneuvering outside conducting thermal readings to determine the number of humans inside; it disgorged the team of officers who decided to release eight mechanical, robotic bot-spyders with polywog-like spherical bodies and tails that were stored in each officer's belt with their legs retracted; they were released to begin a search by swarming throughout the building to perform retinal scans on "27 warm bodies" to determine identities from eyeballs, to find out whether Anderton was there or not; to hide from them, Anderton submerged himself in a bathtub of ice water, but the spyders found him when he came up for a breath; they pulled the bandages off his eyes to scan his retina, but luckily for him, the transplants fooled them ("It's not him")

Threatening Mechanical Bot-Spyders Located Anderton Hiding in Ice-Cold Bathwater, and Conducted a Retinal Scan on His Eyes

• after returning to the Pre-crime Department building, Anderton assumed a disguise (using a "facial transformer" syringe given to him by Dr. Eddie) that allowed him to infiltrate the facility as a maintenance worker; to easily bypass the retinal scanner, Anderton held up one of his old retinas (kept in a plastic Ziploc bag)
• meanwhile, Witwer had been able to identify four people in the hotel in Agatha's pre-vision of the killing of Crow: a pipe-smoking old woman in the lobby, Crow, another figure, and a "third party" man wearing sunglasses outside the window; he suddenly realized that the additional figure in the room was Agatha herself who was accompanying Anderton
• inside the Pre-cog's "Temple" chamber, Anderton enlisted the help of "Wally" to scan the premonition of his own Leo Crow murder case and provide him with a copy; inside the tank area, Agatha again grabbed his hand and asked: "Can you see?"; Witwer discovered Anderton's unauthorized presence in the "Temple" and smashed the control center's main viewing window to pursue him; Anderton grabbed Agatha from the tank, and evaded Witwer by pulling a lever that flushed or sucked both of them out from the floor of the tank; according to "Wally," Agatha was the most talented and was the key to the system; her absence would effectively disrupt the trio's 'hive mind' abilities, and shut down the entire division's predictability of murder; Witwer knew that the Pre-crime team would find both Agatha and Anderton at the location of the Crow murder: ("She's in the room with him when he kills Crow. She's already a part of his future")
• there were now only 51 minutes and 30 seconds until Crow's predicted death; Anderton drove off with Agatha, and entered a Gap store to buy her some clothes; he learned after an entry scan that his eyes had belonged to a 'Mr. Yakamoto'
• to be able to access (or hack into) the information inside Agatha to prove his innocence, Anderton visited unethical cyber-criminal and Dreamweaver (DW) computer technician Rufus T. Riley (Jason Antoon) at his business; Rufus was offering customers a service that allowed them to plug into external virtual mind streams of their own purchased visions in private experiential booths, including sex, rape, near-death, sports, and "Look Ma, I can fly" fantasies [Note: This was similar to the premise of Strange Days (1995).]
• Rufus helped to download and record Agatha's predictive, projected pre-vision memories-images of Anderton shooting and killing Crow (propelling him backward through a window), but according to Agatha's own admission, there was no post-murder "minority report" that would save him; Agatha suffered a seizure (due to images of a second projection that was downloaded and recorded) of Agatha's original memories of Anne Lively's drowning by a masked man
• the two fled when Pre-crime units converged on the business; as they raced through a mall to make their escape, Agatha helped by predicting everything that would happen to them in the immediate future; she wisely suggested the use of an umbrella to shield themselves from view; shortly later, Witwer interrogated Rufus about what Anderton had wanted and requested similar copies of the recorded visions
• Anderton figured out Crow's address when they came upon a tall hotel building (the Palrulew Hotel) where the Crow murder was expected to take place - in just about 13 minutes; he looked up and saw a billboard picturing the sunglasses-wearing man being hoisted up on a crane to be put into place; it was the same "third party" individual who appeared outside the window in the pre-vision of the shooting; in the hotel directory, Anderton located Crow registered in Room # 1006; Agatha urged Anderton to not enter ("You have a choice, walk away, right now"), but he felt compelled to learn his fate and who was setting him up: "I have to know. I have to find out what happened in my life"; Anderton glanced around in the lobby and spotted a woman smoking a pipe

Hotel Room # 1006 - The Location of the Crow Murder
The "Third Party" Man Wearing Sunglasses - Revealed to be on a Billboard	"Leo Crow" Registered in Room # 1006	Agatha: "Walk away" Anderton: "I have to know"
Entering the Unlocked Hotel Room Door	Pictures of Sean	"I am going to kill this man"

• they entered Crow's unlocked hotel room door (after entering the wrong room), with only 5 minutes to spare; there were stacks of children's photos on Crow's bed, including a few of Sean; Anderton feared his predetermined murderous impulses after all indications were that Crow was Sean's suspected serial child kidnapper-murderer: "You were right. I'm not being set up....You said so yourself. There is no minority report. I don't have an alternate future. I am going to kill this man"; Agatha begged Anderton: "You still have a choice. The others never saw their future. You still have a choice!"
• when Crow entered, Anderton fought with him and accused him of killing his son 6 years earlier in Baltimore; Crow confessed that he had impersonated a policeman, lured Sean away with a pretzel, and then drowned him in a barrel in the Bay; Anderton continued to beat up Crow and held his gun at him 11 seconds before his predicted death, but then relented when Agatha influentially persuaded and again urged him - against her own nature - to reconsider and change his fate: "You can choose"; but then, Anderton didn't pull the trigger and followed her advice - he arrested Crow (and began to read him his Miranda rights), causing his intended victim to become visibly upset by the reversal; Crow begged to be killed ("You're not gonna kill me?")
• Crow went further, explaining that he had been bribed and assured of financial stability by an unknown individual for allowing himself to be set-up as the murderer of Anderton's son, after being discovered with the fake, doctored photos in his hotel room: ("If you don't go through with this, my family gets nothing, okay? You're supposed to kill me. He said you would...He told me I'd be released if I went along, and my family would be taken care of....If I acted like I killed your kid, okay?...Look, you don't kill me, my family gets nothing. Okay?") - this was clear evidence of a conspiracy against Anderton - to compel him to commit murder; when Anderton still refused to shoot him (and kept asking who set him up), Crow grabbed Anderton's gun held up against his chest and the gun went off

The Pre-Cogs Version of the Murder

The Photos Displayed on the Bed at the Crime Scene

Witwer: The Crime Scene was an Obvious "Orgy of Evidence"

• however, in the next instant, it was unclear what happened; the image showed Anderton from a distance blasting Crow to death with the gun, propelling him backwards through the building's window before dropping the gun and leaving (it was a replay of the Pre-cogs version of the 'murder'); off-screen, Anderton and Agatha were again forced to flee, and in the subsequent scene, Witwer was investigating the crime scene in the hotel room and declaring: ("It doesn't make sense"); as a former homicide detective, he felt it was improbable that a child killer would so obviously display so many pictures of his crimes on a bed - he called it an "orgy of evidence' - proof of an "arranged" set-up
• in the next sequence, Burgess was distressed while watching a news report of the Crow "murder" - stating that it was the first time in six years of the Pre-crime "experiment" that a murder had not been prevented; due to a human failure, the Pre-crime detectives hadn't arrived in time to stop the killing, "but the murder itself happened exactly as the Pre-cogs predicted it would"; however, the skeptical Witwer - after concluding that Anderton was the wrong man to chase after, phoned Burgess to set up a meeting in Anderton's home
• upon first meeting up with Burgess, Witwer handed him Anderton's gun found in Crow's hotel room, and then proceeded to again discuss the missing data and discrepancies in the Anne Lively murder case; with Anderton's holo-projector, the two viewed the records of all three Pre-cogs of the Lively murder; Witwer demonstrated a major difference by comparing the twins' matching pre-vision account of Anne's murder (that was missing Agatha's "memory stream") from Containment, and Rufus' recording of Agatha's directly-downloaded pre-vision from the Cyber Parlor; he noted how the two pre-visions were slightly different accounts, evidenced by an obvious change in the wind pattern on the water; he surmised: "This murder is taking place at two different times...Why would someone want this erased from the data file?...I'm thinking somebody got away with murder"; Burgess admitted that Witwer had uncovered the existence of a second 'echo' recording that had been erased
• Witwer proposed that there were two similar murder incidents, and he suggested that the technicians wouldn't realize the difference; they would assume that Agatha's pre-vision was an 'echo' and therefore would erase it, but it revealed the actual murder of Anne Lively: ("What if a technician only thought he was looking at an echo? What if what he was really looking at was a completely different murder altogether?")
• Witwer went on to describe how Anne Lively's potential "John Doe" killer was arrested by Pre-crime due to the twins' account, but then hypothesized that shortly later, a second masked individual (dressed to look exactly like the potential killer), reenacted the same murder that was carried out - for real: ("All you'd have to do is hire someone to kill Anne Lively, someone like a drifter, a neuroin addict, someone with nothing to lose. Pre-crime stops the murder from taking place, haloes the killer, takes him away. But then, right then, someone else, having reviewed the pre-vision and dressed in the same clothes, commits the murder in exactly the same way. Technician takes a look, thinks he's looking at an echo, erases it. Of course, it would have to be someone with access to the pre-visions in the first place. Someone fairly high-up")
• Witwer confronted the corrupt mastermind founder Lamar Burgess with his findings that someone had fooled the system; he implicated the cold-blooded and skillful Burgess as the one who had murdered Anne Lively, and also manipulatively framed Anderton; Burgess calculated that the Pre-cogs were not recording him at their location: ("No footsteps up the stairs. No hovercraft at the window. No clickity click of little spyders. Do you know why I can't hear any of those things, Danny? Because right now, the Pre-cogs can't see a thing"); Burgess knew that he had no choice but to shoot and murder Witwer to silence him with Anderton's gun, with two shots to the chest and head
• on the run, Agatha and Anderton proceeded to drive to Lara's lakefront cottage in the stolen Lexus to seek refuge; just as they arrived, Lara was notifying Burgess of their whereabouts by phone; during a discussion with Lara at the dock, Anderton struggled to figure things out, and suddenly realized the suspicious timing of everything; it appeared that just as he was unraveling the Anne Lively murder case, he had been set up for Leo Crow's murder
• back in Lara's house, Agatha (who had perused Sean's room and closet left as it was six years earlier) quoted from Dr. Hineman: "The dead don't die. They look on and help"; to Sean's two parents, she described a vision of their missing son Sean's potential life; she claimed that he was spiritually still alive, and gave a heartbreaking and beautiful description of what he would have been if he had lived - set on a career path to become a veterinarian: ("He's on the beach now, a toe in the water. He's asking you to come in with him. He's been racing his mother up and down the sand. There's so much love in this house. He's ten years old. He's surrounded by animals. He wants to be a vet. You keep a rabbit for him, a bird and a fox. He's in high school. He likes to run, like his father. He runs the two-mile and the long relay. He's 23. He's at a university. He makes love to a pretty girl named Claire. He asks her to be his wife. He calls here and tells Lara who cries. He still runs, across the University. And in the stadium where John watches. Oh, God, he's running so fast, like his daddy. He sees his daddy. He wants to run to him, but he's only six years old and he can't do it. And the other man is so fast")
• and then Agatha switched subjects, referring to the "drowning woman" - Anne Lively - whose "little girl" was already gone and had grown up; the daughter was not alive, but she didn't die either; Anderton replied: "I figured that" - that Agatha was Anne Lively's daughter, but then, before Agatha could tell Anderton who had murdered her mother, Agatha had foreseen that they were being pursued by Pre-crime hoverships that had been launched by Burgess - and provided a shocking warning: ("I'm sorry, John, but you're gonna have to run again... RUUUUUNNNNNNNNN!"); Anderton was surrounded, arrested and charged with the murders of Crow and Witwer; he was 'haloed" and placed in a prisoner pod at Containment with Gideon, while Agatha was returned to a flotation tank to be with the other Pre-cogs
• Lara continued to follow up on Anderton's concerns about Anne Lively with Burgess in his home's office - the day of a press conference and a special dinner event to be held at a DC hotel; Burgess mentioned he had changed his mind about retiring to protect the "fragility" of the organization; Lara mentioned how Anderton had felt he was set up (to commit murder) after he had delved deeper into the Anne Lively murder case, and that Crow was a fake plant; Burgess reassured her that he would investigate everything with Gideon in Containment, including Witwer's murder (and evidence) and Anne Lively's drowning; Lara suddenly realized that she had never mentioned murder by drowning - revealing to her that Burgess was the villainous and ruthless conspirator; he only responded by telling her: "We'll talk about this later. Perhaps tomorrow, I'll come by the cottage"; Lara left, taking a box of Anderton's belongings, including his gun and the Ziploc bag with one of his retinas; after gaining entry to Containment, she forced Gideon at gunpoint to break her husband out of the prison facility
• the film's wrap-up conclusion began with a lavish black-tie banquet dinner in a ballroom within DC's Inter-Continental Hotel, to commemorate and celebrate the national launch of the Pre-crime division; Burgess was presented with a golden revolver (an antique Civil War weapon ironically representing peace after the end of almost five years of death and destruction); Burgess was confronted by Anderton - first with a private emergency phone call to sarcastically accuse Burgess of murder - revealing his knowledge of Burgess' homicidal machinations: ("I just wanted to congratulate you. You did it. You created a world without murder....And all you had to do was kill someone to do it")
• Anderton then explained the reason for Burgess' conspiracy - Anne had been a drug-addicted "junkie" who was forced to sell her pre-cog daughter Agatha to the program; but then, she had cleaned herself up and conquered her neuroin drug habit and wanted to remove her fragile daughter from the Pre-crime flotation tanks; however, by that time, Dr. Hineman and Burgess had already created the Pre-crime Department; Burgess felt threatened with the possibility of the shut-down of his sinister, futuristic law enforcement organization: (Anderton: "And the problem was, without Agatha, there was no Pre-crime. She's always been the strongest of the three. You knew without Agatha, you had nothing. Without her, you wouldn't be where you are now, standing there signing autographs")
• to back up his accusations, Anderton had arranged with Jad to project the video recording of Agatha's past pre-vision of her mother's death by drowning, for viewing by the attendees at the dinner: (Anderton: "So you had to get rid of Anne Lively. You had to shut her up, which presented a problem. How can you kill her without the Pre-cogs seeing it? Simple: Use the system you control against her"); Burgess had arranged for the convicted pre-murderer "John Doe" in Containment to attempt the drowning murder of Agatha's mother; she was lured to the lake with the promise of seeing her daughter; after the killer was arrested by Pre-crime officers and taken away before even getting into the water, Burgess then arrived to comfort Anne, who asked: "Where's my daughter?"; he distracted Anne by pointing ahead, reversed his overcoat, donned a black mask and goggles, and reenacted her drowning murder in 2049; he was revealed as Anne's murderer; he knew that the second similar "echo" recording of the actual murder would be disregarded and destroyed, and Anne Lively would be considered "just another missing person": (Anderton: "And then when you were all alone, you killed her yourself in the same way the Precogs predicted your John Doe would kill her. You made the real murder look like an 'echo', knowing the tech would do as he was trained to do, disregard it")

Exposed As a "Murderer" at the Dinner	Anne Lively Lured to the Lake	The Murderer Was Apprehended by Pre-crime, Haloed, and Taken Away
Burgess Then Arrived at the Lake, With an Overcoat and Black Gloves	He Distractedly Pointed Anne Forward, While He Backed Off and Reversed His Coat	During Agatha's Pre-Vision, She Cried Out: "Run!"
		Burgess Murdered Anne by Drowning
Burgess Donned a Black Mask and Goggles

• Anderton asked: "So, what are you gonna do, Lamar? What are you gonna do?"; as Lamar removed the golden revolver from the case and loaded it, in the flotation tank, Agatha produced another predictive report of a murder with the delivery of a Pre-crime "red-ball" - the murder of Victim Anderton (shot point-blank) by Perpetrator Burgess
• Burgess had left the dinner party by now and was wandering through the hotel's kitchen, muttering to Anderton: "Think about the lives that little girl saved. Think about all the lives she will save? That little girl could have saved Sean"; Anderton was infuriated, and accused his boss of framing him for a crime he had not committed (because of his knowledge of Burgess' nefarious actions): "You used the memory of my dead son to set me up! That was the one thing you knew would drive me to murder"
• as the two antagonists met face-to-face on the hotel's rooftop patio overlooking the Washington Monument, Anderton proposed to Burgess that he had a choice (similar to the choice Anderton had faced when contemplating killing Crow): "The question you have to ask is: 'What are you going to do now?' No doubt the Pre-cogs have already seen this...."
• Anderton spoke of the 'Catch-22' dilemma facing Burgess - if he murdered Anderton, the division would be validated, but Burgess would be arrested; if he didn't kill Anderton, then the Pre-crime unit would be considered flawed and shut down: ("You see the dilemma, don't you? If you don't kill me, Pre-cogs were wrong and Pre-crime is over. If you do kill me, you go away but it proves the system works. Pre-cogs were right. So, what are you gonna do now? What's it worth? Just one more murder. You'll rot in hell with a halo, but people will still believe in Pre-crime. All you have to do is kill me, like they said you would. Except you know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice, Lamar. Like I did"); Anderton concluded by mentioning the flaw in the Pre-crime system - that people could actually change their future

Anderton Confronted Killer Lamar Burgess With a Dilemma, Concluding with Burgess' Choice to Commit Suicide

• Burgess announced his choice, a third option - he would select his own fate and suicidally commit suicide by shooting himself with the golden revolver: ("Yes, I have a choice and I made it. Forgive me, John. (gunshot) Forgive me. Forgive me, my boy")
• the film's voice-over epilogue from Anderton explained the aftermath - the abandonment of the Pre-crime program: ("In 2054, the six-year Pre-crime experiment was abandoned. All prisoners were unconditionally pardoned and released, although police departments kept watch on many of them for years to come. Agatha and the twins were transferred to an undisclosed location - a place where they could find relief from their gifts. A place where they could live out their lives in peace"); Anderton and a pregnant Lara were preparing to have their second child

Pre-cogs Agatha and the Twins Moved to an Undisclosed Location - a Small Secluded Wooden Cabin

• another twist in the film was possible -- the earlier line of dialogue by prison guard Gideon to imprisoned cop Anderton hinted that the final favorable resolution of events in the film was just a dream and wish-fulfillment on Anderton's part, or that the entire film had been Anderton's dream: "They say you have visions, that your life flashes before your eyes, that all your dreams come true"