Crime is not predictable at all!

Rating: 10/10 (7 November 2006)

The human race has always been obsessed by the future, which is probably one distinctive trait that makes it human and takes it out of animality. Humanity has to plan its future in order to survive, hence it has to predict its future needs. But humanity remains an animal race in many ways, including of course its survival instinct. So crime is part of the picture, what we call crime in our human ethics. But this is nothing but the individual survival instinct that goes against the collective survival instinct. Then the collectivity, human society decides to consider the individual survival instinct as being a crime and as deserving punishment. It is, and has been, tempting to predict what and which individuals will become criminals in order to prevent that crime. It was for instance suggested under President Nixon to preventively take away into reform schools all the kids, aged six or seven, that had the « typical criminal » psychology before they realized their destiny which was considered as inescapable and necessarily criminal. This approach was essentially behavioral. Then another appeared, essentially genetic this time and some still believe that the DNA of any individual contains its destiny that is absolutely inescapable. So let us put away those who have the « crime » genes. Steven Spielberg deals with this dilemma but based this time on a modern embodiment of the seers of old. Three people have been transformed by some genetic manipulation into seers of the future and their predictions are considered as absolutely infallible since they always seem to agree. Then the criminals are arrested before they commit their crime and put away. The effect is the disappearance of crime from Washington D.C. in just a few years. But Steven Spielberg goes further and demonstrates that there are several flaws in this theory. First the three seers don't always agree and there might be a minority report from one of them that is over-ruled by the two others and not communicated to the precrime police. Then this precrime police is a private enterprise and it was necessary to prove its efficiency to get the business. Little by little it appears that the founder of this technology manipulated it in order to prove his theory by arresting someone who was supposed to kill a woman just before he did. That one was paid by the inventor who then afterward committed himself the very crime exactly the way it was supposed to happen which enabled this second crime to be understood by technicians as a simple echo of the first one that was prevented and to be disregarded. The death of the woman only became a missing person. That is the flaw of the film : why didn't anyone investigate this « disappearance » ? But then he also had to trick his own associate, the main detective of this precrime police. He does that by getting the latter's son killed in such a way that the crime will remain unsolved. But this enables the boss to nourish in his associate a desire to know who killed his son. This associate's coming around to that knowledge will make him become a criminal and thus he will be neutralized and put away but after the crime is committed for reasons that are not clear. But a few facts were brought together and sorted out by this cop's wife and then she manages to get her husband free, which sounds quite iffy, and this triggers a full process of truth discovery and public broadcasting. The end is yours to discover. But this approach, with marvelous special effects and beautiful action, seems to overkill the point it wants to make : The future is inescapable and predictable, and yet the future can be tampered with and manipulated. The first principle is excessive and even wrong. The second is probably true. But both together are just absurd because contradictory. The point is then disproved by this very contradiction. But it is a great film nevertheless that reveals this question of the future and its possible prediction is essential to man and humanity.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne