Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002) is a sleek, propulsive science-fiction thriller that stands out not only for its imaginative vision of the future but also for the philosophical questions it raises about free will, justice, and the ethics of surveillance. Adapted loosely from a short story by Philip K. Dick, the film combines Spielberg’s instinct for spectacle with a darker, more paranoid tone, resulting in one of the most intellectually engaging mainstream sci-fi films of the early 2000s. Set in Washington, D.C. in the year 2054, Minority Report imagines a society in which murder has been virtually eliminated thanks to the “PreCrime” division of law enforcement. PreCrime relies on three psychic “precogs” who can foresee murders before they happen. When the system predicts a killing, police intervene and arrest the future murderer moments before the act occurs. The premise is both elegant and unsettling: if a crime is prevented, can it still be considered a crime? And if the f...