Minority Report on "Minority Report"
A Reply to The Cat Lady's Review

by Victor Wolzek

July 7, 2002

I saw "Minority Report" yesterday and have to admit that I'm completely perplexed by The Cat Lady's (hereafter TCL) review. I don't merely disagree with much of it, I am perplexed by it. A strange but pertinent distinction, and here's why I make it: Having not seen the film, TCL's review, like everything else she has written for VNN, appears thorough, thoughtful, and well written, analyzed at the level of the specific film, as well as judged against its predecessors. On its face her review is intelligent and insightful. However, after seeing "Minority Report," I'm compelled to say the review is so subjectively skewed as to be almost hallucinogenic. The way it mischaracterizes and problematizes elements of the film that are objectively straightforward and clearly presented is almost Boasian or Gouldian in magnitude. It renders beyond comprehension ("…why on earth…?") details that are plainly dictated by the plot itself. And, most shockingly, while TCL goes out of her way to prove that "Minority Report" is guilty of using a certain "vulgar" narrative device, her efforts to make this point ironically require her to commit the very crime she alleges -- tenfold. One might almost suspect her crime in this regard was done in the first degree, with malice aforethought. Were we in the world of "Minority Report" she'd be guilty of a "brown ball" offense and would've been snatched up by Pre-Crime before putting pen to paper. As the world is always better with more Cat Lady than less, this alone is reason enough to dismiss "Minority Report." However, I do have specific and general issues with her review. Here they are:

Specific Issues

This first point is perhaps the least relevant and the most difficult to explain, because though it seemed significant to me before I saw the movie, it didn't after I saw it. What appeared to be a claim that the title itself, "Minority Report," was a bizarre misnomer, turned out to be a light joke, TCL's disappointment that she agreed with Mark Rivers' review. I'm including it here precisely because of that strange effect. Those who have seen the movie may wish to jump to the next point (marked by the italicized quote).

TCL writes, "Definition: A minority report is a statement of a dissenting viewpoint defeated by majority vote....there is no "minority report" in "Minority Report."

Yes, there is. And the question of whether there is one for the John Anderton case drives the second act of the film.

In the context of "Minority Report," in which three psychic pre-cogs predict future crimes, John Anderton (Cruise), the Director of Pre-Crime, discovers that occasionally the pre-cogs perceive future events differently. For example, two of them may see a murder, while one may see a different, non-murderous outcome. We're told it is almost always the most psychically talented pre-cog who sees the alternative future. Thus, it is suggested that the alternative view is a closer, more precise vision of the future reality, one that should be trusted. Nevertheless, in such a situation the two other pre-cogs see murder as inevitable. Pre-Crime's established protocol is to bury the alternative vision. There is an obvious rationalization for the policy: Pre-Crime agents should err on the side of excess and arrest all potential would-be murderers as if their fate were unquestionably certain, rather than reveal a flaw that would put the kibosh on Pre-Crime and allow thousands of preventable crimes to occur. (This would be the PR spin anyway, even if more sinister motives were in fact at work behind the scenes.)

The record of these alternative outcomes is called "the minority report." It is the most talented pre-cog's dissenting opinion (psychic vision) of what the real future holds, which is defeated in favor of the majority view, presumably for the greater good. After Anderton ends up on the run for a murder he feels certain he cannot be pre-destined to commit (more on this below), he realizes his vindication may reside in a buried minority report. While it turns out there is "no minority report" for Anderton's case, that discovery is substantially relevant to the plot and propels the final act of the movie. The basic point, however, is that there is something called a minority report in the movie, it does fit the definition provided by TCL, and it is central enough to the movie to warrant being its title. TCL's claim that "there is no minority report" in "Minority Report," coupled with a definition, suggests that the title is a nonsensical, irrelevant misnomer. Yet it is clear that the minority report is a central aspect of the movie. So, to be meaningful at all, TCL's criticism must hinge on there not being a minority report in Anderton's case. But why is this objectionable? Anderton's discovery that such a thing as a minority report exists at all is a key plot point in the film. Anderton's struggle to know whether there is one for his future crime drives the second act of the film. And, finding out that there isn't one in his case -- far from being an empty red-herring -- not only ties into the first part of the film but sets the stage for the third act of the film. TCL's review may not have been a minority report to VNN insofar as it concurred with Mark Rivers' VNN review, but that's as far as the significance of this claim goes. As mentioned above, TCL's statement "there is no minority report in Minority Report" was leveraged for rhetorical cleverness. While this is clear to those who have seen the movie, it may lead others to think that the film is so "incoherent" that even its title is a mistake.

TCL writes, "I hate the vulgar psychoanalytic understanding of motives that is such a staple in Hollywood. Why does John Anderton join the department of pre-crime? What's his motive? Well, he was traumatized by the disappearance and presumed murder of his son six years before. He's in pain. So he tries to prevent future crimes. (The disappearance also destroyed his marriage, but for some reason he did not go into marriage counseling.)"

It's true that "the vulgar psychoanalytic understanding of motives" is a "staple in Hollywood." However, TCL then attempts to show just how silly and vulgar "Minority Report's" understanding of motives is by juxtaposing its rather commonsensical and believable attribution of motive with a counter-example that is neither commonsensical nor believable - i.e., that depends far more on a "vulgar" use of this psychoanalytic interpretative tool. That may sound convoluted, but my point will be plainly obvious after I lay out the details and context of what TCL criticizes and how she criticizes it.

In the context of "Minority Report," the motive for John Anderton joining Pre-Crime is the devastation he experienced when his son was abducted and presumably killed a few short months before Pre-Crime could have thwarted the crime before it took place. He is emotionally destroyed by the event, his marriage falls apart afterward, and he begins "doping" to cope with the pain. He also decides to pursue a career with Pre-Crime, a police division devoted to ensuring that no one else suffers such a horrid, irreplaceable loss. Does anyone out there see this as an exceptionally forced use or abuse of psychoanalytic understanding of motive? Your life is ravaged by crime so you decide to devote your life to stopping it. Seems simple and commonsensical enough to me. Whether it happens all that often in real life I neither know nor think matters for the film.

However, to make this motivational link between the tragic experience and the decision to join Pre-Crime seem absurd, TCL points out that Anderton's marriage fell apart too but he didn't go into marriage counseling. By this logic, since the child was abducted at a public pool, Anderton could just as well have joined a committee to ban public pools. In other words, TCL sees all possible options, however remotely related, as equally reasonable responses to the specific tragedy suffered. (The idea that psychological subjects may project emotional/libidinal energy onto objects arbitrarily is straight Freudian psychoanalytic theory; he calls it "cathexis.") Consequently, TCL deems Anderton's decision to join Pre-Crime as a Hollywood cliché, a plot contrivance, a "vulgar psychoanalytic understanding" of Anderton's motives.

The problem is, as I see it, all options aren't equally likely, or equally arbitrary, and the option TCL states is patently absurd. The break up of Anderton's marriage wasn't a separate tragedy which itself could just as easily have warranted a change of vocation for Anderton. It too was a consequence of the loss of the child, the central emotional disaster of his life. Yes, in today's world it is far too common and therefore easy to imagine real tragedies spinning us in false directions. It's easy to imagine, for example, a spineless liberal, whose daughter is raped by a pack of blacks at a public pool, fixating on banning pools, lobbying to outlaw swimming, or suing his daughter's bathing suit maker because it didn't come with NASA-approved Groid-proof Teflon "Crotch-Guard." But anyone sane enough to read VNN understands that they do this not because all tangentially related options are equally valid, but because they are afraid to confront and conditioned to avoid the real problem (in this case black rapists specifically, forced racial integration generally).

If Anderton were a liberal (or a neocon or contemporary Republican) he'd undoubtedly repress the horror of his child's abduction, focus on something safe and beside the point, and decide he should do everything in his power to solve this safe, beside the point non-problem. But he isn't. With the spirit of a good White Nationalist he aims big. He decides to devote himself to ending crime. Committing himself to a real solution instead of to some arbitrary tangent may mean Anderton is not what Pierce would call a "lemming," but it doesn't mean that his decision makes no sense or that his motivation is forced, over-simplified or under-explained in the story, as TCL suggests.

TCL's seemingly deliberate misunderstanding of and/or hostility to what should be seen as reasonable, natural, and very human responses to events of the story is found again in her review:

TCL writes, "I frankly do not understand how rapidly he rejects the whole pre-crime concept when he finds that he is going to commit a murder. Was he not convinced of its infallibility before? If so, then why does he not even consider turning himself in? His conversion is too radical and is unsupported by anything established about his character. It certainly proves his commitment to pre-crime to be unserious, which does not make him a hero in my book."

I frankly do not understand how this could possibly be a genuine complaint.

In a seminar on deontological ethics, TCL's expectation may make sense, and certainly one would expect "Star Trek's" Spock to do what TCL thinks "Minority Report's" Anderton would/should do. But it would make absolutely no sense for Anderton to surrender himself in the context of the film (nor would any real-world psychological theory expect such an outcome).

Let's take a closer look at the context. Earlier in the film it is said that "red ball" crimes - heat of passion-type murders - which are set to occur minutes after prediction are almost all that is left in Washington, DC (the testing ground for Pre-Crime). Why? Because with Pre-Crime in effect for six years, premeditated crimes are all but completely gone. Who would dare to plan to murder someone when they are sure to be pre-cogged and arrested ahead of time? Heat of passion crimes, however, persist because people may be moved to violence unexpectedly in highly volatile situations, such as a man finding his wife in bed with another man. Such flare-ups are too spontaneous to be predicted well in advance. Premeditated crimes on the other hand may be predicted much further in advance. This is so not necessarily because the intent to kill is established much earlier in time (as Anderton ends up illustrating, a premeditated intent to kill may be established just moments before the act is to occur). Rather, it is because the intent of one human being to kill another human being creates the most erratic -- and therefore most easily pre-cogged -- metaphysical disturbance in the universe. Nothing, we're told in classic jew-on-goy sentimental moralism, is more out of harmony with the universe than the intent of one person to kill another another. (Oh yeah? Tell it to the Israelis, Stevie.)

Soon after confronting an antagonistic federal agent Witwer (Colin Farrell) who is aiming to take Anderton's job, Anderton unexpectedly discovers that he is predicted to commit a rare "brown ball" murder in just less than two days, i.e., to intentionally kill a man whom he has never met. Anderton is stymied. How is this possible? There is obviously no current premeditation on his part, yet it's not a "red ball" pre-cog (signifying a heat of passion murder). From his point of view as Pre-Crime director and believer in the infallibility of the system there's obviously a problem, one he has never encountered before. Moreover, at this time he does not know disagreement among the pre-cogs is possible and that there might be a dissenting "minority report" on the prediction. Since he never knew minority reports were possible, he had reason to believe that all previously arrested citizens would be guilty of the predicted crime. Only at this moment, when confronted with the unthinkable, does he realize there MUST be a flaw in the system, one which, he has reason to believe, Witwer used to set him him up. Of course Anderton is in no position to pursue his suspicions. If he simply turned and said, "Look it's me!" He'd be "Halo'd" (rendered inert, mentally handcuffed), shaved (see comment on this below), dunked in a glowing tank, and silenced forever like thousands of others. He could submit to the whole thing and prove his "serious" dedication to Pre-Crime, a system he realizes is flawed only at that moment. Or, he could run and try to figure out the glitch in the system and/or prove his innocence. On this reading, his choosing to run is proof (not disproof) of his serious commitment to Pre-Crime. Hi commitment is to a Pre-Crime that works perfectly. To surrender himself to tank imprisonment would be to allow an imperfect Pre-Crime to persist, and to condemn other innocents.

Anderton's integrity on this point is underscored later in the film at the moment when he has reason to believe the pre-cogs were correct and he is destined to kill a the man he had never met. Anderton is somber and crushed by the realization and it is obvious he would willingly surrender himself after killing the man. So, is he still unserious about Pre-Crime? Moreover, when he proves the pre-cogs' visions of the future could in fact be changed by free will, he does not aim to bury that information, as others would, because it is detrimental to Pre-Crime. When Anderton was sure Pre-Crime was foolproof he believed in it 100%. When he realized it was flawed he fought to expose the conspiracy that sought to silence him and to conceal the truth. Again, unlike spineless liberals who hold on to their initial conviction despite all accrued evidence, Anderton battles to unravel the truth, even when it means destroying his life's work.

In short, one has to stretch to bemoan as unbelievable Anderton's choosing to run. As is said in the film more than once, "They all run." It's human nature to resist the end of your freedom or your death, even if it is deserved. If you have compelling reason to believe you are falsely accused, you have even more reason to run. In "Minority Report" would-be criminals are confronted with a supposedly fail-safe system wherein there is no trial, no chance of explanation, and, at this time in the story, no hope that there may be a "minority report" that argues for your innocence. Anyone with reason to believe they are innocent would be a fool not to run.

Is a deep subtext really needed to make Anderton's flight believable? Only if your criteria of believable behavior is "what would Spock do?" instead of "what would a reasonable person in this position do?" Whether he's a hero or not, at this point in the film, has yet to be determined, but his choosing to run does not answer that question. Surrendering to a conclusion all evidence suggests is false would be lemming-like, which would not make Anderton a hero in my book. (For Chrissake, RUN, White Man, RUN! FIGHT!)

TCL writes, "And why the hell does he shave his head at the end of the film?"

"He" doesn't shave his head, Pre-Crime shaves it after he's captured and then puts him in a prison containment tank for the murder predicted by the pre-cogs. It's answered that simply.

It's completely clear and obvious in the film why he's shaved at the end. I'm perplexed that TCL asks the question, and does so in such a way that suggests the film, rather than her review of it, lacks coherence. If the complaint about the head-shaving has less to do with whether it serves the plot and more to do with agitation that Tom Cruise's skull is "brachycephalic" or otherwise not "very desirable," well, what is one to say to that?

General Issues

I fully concur that "Minority Report" does not delve deeply into the metaphysical paradoxes of free-will and determinism, or the various ethical issues that accompany these paradoxes, as well as those surrounding the treatment of the pre-cogs, the captured would-be criminals, etc. But I think this is a good thing. As it stands the movie is never unclear or unintentionally confusing (and it very well could have been). It's an action film and isn't overstuffed with heavy-handed moralizing (a la "Amistad") or extended speeches on "the meaning of it all" (as I've heard ruin "A.I." though I haven't seen it). Similar to "Minority Report," Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" fails to address any WWII issues with depth or sophistication, yet it's a tremendously entertaining action movie (though, like Mark Rivers, I now deplore its anti-Nazi theme). My claim is not that "Minority Report" is necessarily a great movie or that one is "wrong" not to enjoy it. But the standards by which it is judged should be relative to what it aims to be and compared to competitors in its genre. It's not "My Dinner with Andre." Nor is it "Mulholland Drive," one of TCL's favorite movies and one of her very best VNN reviews. Though "Minority Report" may lack intellectual depth or rich allegorical symbolism, it's rife with fantastic special effects, however "derivative." (Why say that the spiders are derivative of "The Matrix" but not that the Pre-Crime vehicles are derivative of Boba Fett's ship the Slave I? Or that the Pre-Crime officer jet packs are derivative of Boba Fett's jet pack?) Derivative or not, the effects, the weapons, the whole design of the futuristic world it depicts, are exhilarating to behold.

Finally, despite all the anti-White themes that Rivers and TCL pointed out, and with which I basically agree, "Minority Report" may be read differently. I choose to read it as a pro-White action adventure in which a White man uses his wits, strength, intelligence, ingenuity, two fists and both feet to fight a corrupt system hell-bent on his destruction. Though he once believed in that system and fully committed himself to it, he now sees it is not only flawed but also malevolently geared to persecute and silence him. Sound familiar, White nationalists? He neither buckles nor plays by the system's rules. He kicks ass, and he wins.

Now let's use my pro-White lens to re-read what both TCL and Rivers say is film's supposedly anti-White depiction of the future DC. Though it is true virtually all the criminals shown imprisoned in tanks are White, just about everyone in the movie is White or a crypto-White jew (which, unfortunately, too many viewers will perceive as simply "White"). Non-Whites are shockingly rare, even during street scenes. While the film doesn't address it, I like to think that this presupposes some radical change that happens between today and mid-century to derail not only the impending minority status of Whites in America but also their current actual minority status in the nation's capital. Moreover, as Pre-Crime cleaned house fairly quickly, eliminating almost all but "red-ball" - heat of passion - murders, it's possible to assume that all the non-White criminals were cleaned out first, them not being so bright and all. On this reading, they are simply "back shelf" criminals, the early easy catches now taking up space in the back rows of the Pre-Crime jailhouse. We see only the freshest catches, the smartest criminals who've survived to the very end, the Whites.

This would also account for the fact that there seems to be almost no minorities, especially blacks, in the DC of the future. Even the public housing (aka "projects") depicted in the movie is almost all White. Is this an anti-White gesture or a glorious sign of hope? While it's wise to assume the worst when it comes to Jews generally, and Jew filmmakers in particular, as viewers it is sometimes up to us to determine what a film means. Hell, if White society immobilized, shaved, and dunked 99% of its non-White population in a tank somewhere far, far away, I would have zero problem working with the 1% of the elite, intelligent, articulate, and relatively human-acting non-Whites at the office, as Anderton does.

Like him or hate him, flattering skull or not, John Anderton is a strong White male who fights against a corrupt political system and wins. We could use more - not less - John Andertons on our side.

After all, we don't need "Minority Report" to know itz coming.

Victor Wolzek