The Contradictions of "Minority Report"

For all its hand-wringing over the possibility of predestination, teethgnashing about the ethical relationship between murderous thought and murderous action, and beseeching reminders that we "have a choice," Minority Report subordinates the travails of liberal individualism to the problem of hi-tech regulation. A number of mainstream reviewers depicted the film as a cautionary tale about the state surveillance apparatus sent into overdrive by America's "war on terror" (Lane; O'Hehir; Ebert), and Slavoj Zizek has seized upon its fictional Bureau of Precrime to illustrate a critique of the "Cheney doctrine" of preemptive aggression.