Similar Products - Character analysis 1

Minority Report - Cheif John Anderton


Plot
In the year 2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to an elite law enforcing squad "Precrime". They use three gifted humans (called "Pre-Cogs") with special powers to see into the future and predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton heads Precrime and believes the system's flawlessness steadfastly. However one day the Pre-Cogs predict that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours. Worse, Anderton doesn't even know the victim. He decides to get to the mystery's core by finding out the 'minority report' which means the prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that "might" tell a different story and prove Anderton innocent.

John is the main chracter in the movie and is the protagonist. He has many qualitys such as: quick thinking, friendly, intelligant, powerful, troubled, mysterious, in the know, driven, lonely, bad past, respected. These are the main qualaties that most protagnosit's of thrillers have. The majority of these can be seen int he following clip of when John is running away from his work collegues when he is seen committing a murder and they need to arrest him.

When his collegues first arive he has a conversation with them. Making jokes about the landing, and then making further jokes about running away from them. This shows that his charcter is friendly. One of the women in the group calls him 'Cheif' (this name for him is continued to be used through out the clip) showing that although he is supposed to do something wrong they still respect him enough to call him that. His power, intelligance and ability to quickly think are then shown when they try and take him in. He quickly takes control of the situation by getting rid of as many people as possible so that they can not capture him. His power is shown through over-powering the others. Also the fact that he does not kill any of his collegues, he only hurts them enough to knock them out for him to escape. His intelligance also shows through as he knows what to do in the situation to get away from them as quick and easily as possible.

The first impression we get of John is that of a intelligant and hard working detective, this is shown through him working on a current case. As this scene develops we learn that he is powerful and high up in his work. He is the one in charge. We also learn that he is going to be the protagonist as he is trying to do what he beleives is right. However, after this scene of portraying him in a good light we learn of the bad side to the character. He goes out running in the middle of the night, and meets with a man who sells him some drugs. He then goes home to take them and watched old home movies of his son and wife. He can say every word of the one with his son which implies that he watches the videos a lot. This implies that there is something bad about his current family life as we can see that there is no son or wife in the house.

As the plot continues, we learn that he has lost his son because he was kidnapped and that his wife left him because he was the one that some people blamed as he was the one who was supposed to be looking after him at the time. This is shown to the audience through flash backs of his memory. This allows us to learn that his character is caring and blames himself for what has happened to his son. We also learn that he will not give up on what he belives is right. This is the strongest of his ethics that shines through.

His main ethics are that of making sure that he does what is right. This is shown thourgh his job and that when he was said to be the one that is going to murder someone, he sets out to clear his name and prove that the future that is predicted for is a choice. The idea of you always having a choice and not having to do what you have been predicted to do is also a strong ethic of John's. This is mainly learnt at the end of the film when he is talking to antagonist about having a choice about what he does next. That he does not have to follow through with what has been predicted of him.