SOURCE: Kerr, Philip. “Crime Watch.” New Statesman 15, no. 714 (8 July 2002): 45.

In the following review, Kerr discusses the implausibility of the plot and the underdeveloped philosophical themes in Minority Report.

By my reckoning, there were 1,002 people, including Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, involved in making Minority Report, and so I do not criticise this picture lightly. There are good things in it, not least Spielberg's future cityscape—which owes much to Fritz Lang—an intermittently witty script and a delightful cameo from Lois Smith. American audiences seem to like the film, so it might be that I am the kind of person that L Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, would have described, in his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, as “picky”.

Recognising that this might be the case, I took an online personality test for the Church of Scientology, of which Tom Cruise...