Minority Report
Reviewed by Jeffrey Mishlove, June 2002

VIEWING CRIMES BEFORE THEY OCCUR

Minority Report is predicated upon the possibility that special "precog" psychics can see murders committed in the future with uncanny accuracy – and that police "pre-crime"  intervention can then arrest the perpetrators before their crimes are actually committed.  As a reviewer with both a Master of Criminology degree and a doctoral diploma in parapsychology, I have a very special interest in this subject.  My opinion is that the screenplay, written by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen and based on the short story by Philip K. Dick, offers a futuristic scenario similar to one that I have long held to be possible.  For that reason alone, I highly recommend this movie.
 
I have testified in court as to the viability of psychics working together with law enforcement officials, and have collected data on a number of crimes that have been solved in this manner.  The practical applications of extrasensory abilities been demonstrated on numerous occasions.  In addition to psychic clairvoyants who work with police, there is also a new breed of "remote-viewers" -- many of whom either received their training while serving in the U.S. military or under instruction from someone who went through the program that was secretly sponsored by the U.S. government for twenty years.  The premise of Minority Report is not simply that of extrasensory perception, however; the film cleverly examines some of the philosophical implications of precognition -- i.e., clairvoyant vision of the future.  It is probably counter to the expectations that most of us hold, but ESP research suggests that precognition is just as strong an ability as real-time clairvoyance.

About twenty years ago, I started to work on a novel in which a Brazilian corporation was formed to exploit the potentials of precognition.  100% accuracy, of course, was neither possible nor required.  Nor did I find it necessary, as in Minority Report, to postulate the need for rare children, born of drug-addicted parents, in order to justify potent psychic functioning.  I did envision, however, that the corporate psychics in my novel would all be wired up to physiological measuring equipment.  After all, research suggests that we are beginning to understand the brainwave corrections of genuine psychic activity.  Researchers are even beginning to understand the nerve function correlates of shapes and forms in the visual processing areas of the brain.

The Minority Report script keeps the "precogs" floating in a tank of water, akin to that developed by John Lilly, M.D.  This is a very interesting idea, however, simple relaxation appears to be equally conducive to psychic functioning.

As someone well-acquainted with psychic functioning, I find the premise of near-perfect accuracy to be untenable.  The film's title, "Minority Report," refers to a rare -- and secret -- occurrence when one of three "precogs" is not in agreement with the other two.  In real-life experience, this is a rather common event.  In fact, the world's best psychics are about 66% accurate overall.  Majority-vote techniques can be used to statistically amplify the signal.  But, the need for the appearance of perfection plays an important role in the plot of this film -- as it does in so many others that fictionalize psychic functioning.  After all, movies tend to exaggerate real life events of every type. 

Since there is so much opposition to parapsychological research -- both from disbelieving skeptics and from fundamentalists who believe in the devil -- science fiction writers sometimes employ a totalitarian environment to enforce the authority of otherwise marginal psychics.  Such worlds are frightening, for they contain elements beyond anything history has ever known.  Minority Report shows us a world in which computerized eyeball scanning keeps track of almost every person constantly throughout the day.  In such an environment, it is natural that government control of psychic functioning would necessarily have sinister overtones.  Although I am committed to the future growth of parapsychology, I would rather see the field develop slowly than live in a society where the curtailment of human freedom occurs as a result of psychic foreknowledge in the hands of authoritarian powers.

The film plays with the question of whether a crime, pre-ordained through psychic foreknowledge, can be avoided.  It is a fascinating question and the parapsychological literature provides many interesting discussions suggesting that the answer is clearly, "yes."  There is a clear distinction between psychic precognition and fate: a plot device inherited from Greek tragedy.  Minority Report tends to lean quite heavily on the Greek tradition.  The hero, John Anderton, played convincingly by Tom Cruise, embodies various elements of Sophocles' tragic hero Oedipus.  Both Anderton and Oedipus are fated to commit murder.  Oedipus unwittingly marries his mother.  Anderton's wife leaves him because she sees her dead son whenever she looks at, or even smells, him.  Both heros even take out their own eyes -- but for very different reasons.  I believe that these mythological elements add to the film's strength.

One key aspect of the sreenplay was too clever for my taste.  The story hinges on a diabolical plot.  Yet, in order for that plot to make sense to me, a key character -- scientist Lamar Burgess, brilliantly played by Max Von Sydow,  would have had to have been a "precog" himself -- or, as in Greek drama, a god.  Since he ostensibly was neither, I found the story inconsistent with its own premise.  This logical error will not detract from the enjoyment of most viewers.  After all, once disbelief has been suspended, anything is possible.  But, for me, the film would have been even better without this internal contradiction. 

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