Some of the details: a computer interface that floats in mid-air, manipulated by Cruise with the gestures of a symphony conductor advertisements that crawl up the sides of walls and address you personally cars that whisk around town on magnetic cushions robotic "spiders" that can search a building in minutes by performing a retinal scan on everyone in it.
As the pre-crime strategy prepares to go national, Witwer seems to have doubts about its wisdom-or he is only jealous of its success? Spielberg establishes these characters in a dazzling future world, created by art director Alex McDowell, that is so filled with details large and small that we stop trying to figure out everything and surrender with a sigh. Anderton's superior, bureau director Burgess (Max von Sydow) takes pride in him, and shields him from bureaucrats like Danny Witwer ( Colin Farrell), from the Justice Department. They're able to pick up thoughts of premeditated murders and warn the cops, who swoop down and arrest the would-be perpetrators before the killings can take place.īecause this is Washington, any government operation that is high-profile and successful inspires jealousy. Anderton presides over an operation controlling three "Pre-Cogs," precognitive humans who drift in a flotation tank, their brain waves tapped by computers. Futuristic skyscrapers coexist with the famous Washington monuments and houses from the 19th century.
Soon, it appears, there will be a murder-committed by Anderton himself.
Dick, Tom Cruise is John Anderton, chief of the Department of Pre-Crime in the District of Columbia, where there has not been a murder in six years. The movie turns out to be eerily prescient, using the term "pre-crime" to describe stopping crimes before they happen how could Spielberg have known the government would be using the same term this summer? In his film, inspired by but much expanded from a short story by Philip K.