Minority Report Ending: Anne Lively & Leo Crow’s Murders Explained

Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi thriller Minority Report unravels a twisted murder mystery that keeps the revelations coming right up until the end. Based on the story of the same name by Philip K. Dick, Minority Report stars Tom Cruise as John Anderton, the Chief of the Precrime Unit in a futuristic vision of Washington, DC. Using three psychics called “precogs,” Precrime is able to see murders before they happen and prevent them. The perpetrators are arrested, sentenced and imprisoned on the basis that they unquestionably would have murdered someone if they hadn’t been stopped.

With Precrime on the brink of becoming a national program, a federal investigator called Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) arrives on the scene to search for flaws in the system. Shortly thereafter, the precogs experience a vision of John murdering a man called Leo Crow (Mike Binder), whom he has never met. Believing that Witwer has set him up, John goes on the run in an effort to buy enough time to prove his innocence. His search for the truth leads him to the strange case of a woman called Anne Lively (Jessica Harper), who was saved from a drowning murder by Precrime cops, only to go missing immediately afterwards.

John also learns about a cover-up within Precrime. Occasionally, one of the precogs’ visions will disagree with the other two, generating a so-called “minority report” that is deleted so that there can be no doubt about Precrime’s certainty of the future. Believing that he must have a minority report, John returns to Precrime and kidnaps the strongest of the precogs, Agatha (Samantha Morton). With the minutes ticking down to his supposed murder of Leo Crow, John still has no clue who his victim is or why he would want to kill him… that is, until he reaches Crow’s apartment.

How (& Why) John Was Set Up to Murder Leo Crow

John’s murder of Leo Crow was indeed premeditated – but not by John. It was orchestrated by Lamar Burgess (Max von Sydow), one of the founders of Precrime and a close friend of John’s. Lamar planned the murder after John came to him to ask about Anne Lively, and why Agatha’s vision of Lively’s death was missing from the system. Knowing that John had gotten too close to a dark truth that could destroy Precrime just before the program went national, Lamar used what he knew to be John’s greatest weakness against him: the disappearance of his son, Sean (Tyler Patrick Jones), in Baltimore six years previously.

Lamar arranged for a criminal called Leo Crow to be released from prison, and promised him that if he agreed to be murdered by John, his family would be well taken care of. He instructed Leo to stay in an apartment with what Witwer calls an “orgy of evidence” spread out over the bed: hundreds of pictures of children, including faked photos of Leo with Sean. When pressed by John, Leo also offered chilling fictional details of how Sean died – drowned in a weighted barrel – as well as hints that he had sexually abused Sean before killing him. All of this is enough to make John accept that he is destined to murder Leo Crow. However, John ultimately lets the deadline for the murder pass and instead tries to arrest Leo. A desperate Leo reveals that he was paid to lie about murdering Sean, and uses John’s gun to kill himself.

Leo Crow’s murder creates a predestination paradox, since the only way John knew to look for a man called Leo Crow was because he had already seen a vision of himself killing him, and he was only able to find the apartment by using clues he had seen in the vision. Even though John doesn’t have a minority report, his decision not to kill Leo Crow undermines the reliability of Precrime in a different way: by knowing his future, John was able to change it. If he was able to make that decision, then many of the criminals he has arrested over the years could have done the same.

What Really Happened to John’s Son

With Leo Crow revealed to be a fake, viewers may be left wondering what really happened to Sean. Minority Report deliberately leaves this question unanswered, so that by the end of the movie we still don’t know any more than John: he was holding his breath underwater at a public pool, and when he came up again Sean had disappeared. We don’t know who took Sean, how he died, or even whether he might still be alive somewhere. Speaking in a 2002 interview with Roger Ebert, Spielberg explained that some questions in Minority Report had been deliberately left unanswered:

“I had John Huston in my ear. I went back and looked at The Maltese Falcon and [Howard] Hawks’ The Big Sleep—to see how some of those film noir mysteries were resolved. They didn’t dot every i and cross every t. They tried to keep you off-balance. They asked more questions than they could answer in those days.”

Within the story, the fact that Sean’s disappearance is left a mystery is vitally important, because the trauma of losing his son is what fuels John’s faith in Precrime. The program shows visions of murders that can be replayed, paused and enhanced so that John can zero in on them and find the answers – something that he was unable to do for Sean. By the end of the movie, John’s acceptance that Precrime has to die is also a symbol of him accepting that he will never know what happened to Sean, and finally being prepared to move on.

How (& Why) Anne Lively Was Murdered

Minority Report‘s story really begins six years before the start of the movie, when Lamar found a way to do the impossible: commit a murder in a world where the police can see murders before they happen. Lamar killed Anne Lively for the same reason that he later set up John to murder Leo Crow – in order to protect Precrime. Though the precogs are publicly billed as a miracle gift to humanity, Dr. Hineman (Lois Smith) reveals to John that they are actually the children of mothers who were addicted to an early version of neuroin, the same drug that John uses. Being exposed to neuroin in utero inflicted terrible brain damage on the children, with most of them dying at an early age. However, those who survived experienced visions of murders that hadn’t happened yet, and they became the basis for Precrime.

Anne Lively was Agatha’s mother, a neuroin addict who went to a rehabilitation facility and managed to beat her addiction. After cleaning herself up, she wanted to have her little girl back. Lamar couldn’t allow Anne to take Agatha away, since the precogs function as a hive mind and the other two – twin brothers called Arthur (Michael Dickmann) and Dashiell (Matthew Dickmann) – don’t “work” without Agatha. He also couldn’t risk Anne publicly demanding the return of her daughter, since that would draw attention to the welfare of the precogs. A display outside Precrime headquarters feeds tourists a string of lies about the precogs’ living conditions, making it clear that their tortured confinement to the pool is just one of Precrime’s many secrets.

To pull off Anne Lively’s murder, Lamar used a phenomenon called an “echo,” where the precogs experience replays of past visions. He told Anne to come and meet him at a lake, and paid a drug-addicted drifter to try and drown her. After watching the vision of her death, Lamar knew all the details of how the original murder would have played out. He then waited by the lake for the drifter to be arrested by Precrime and, after they had left, murdered Anne Lively himself in the exact same way. The precogs sent a vision of that murder as well, but it was dismissed as merely an echo and deleted.

Why Lamar Burgess’s Final Choice Destroys Precrime

In Minority Report‘s ending, Lamar Burgess is offered the same dilemma that John Anderton is in Philip K. Dick’s original story: he can either commit a murder and doom himself, but save Precrime in the progress; or he can choose not to commit the predicted murder, thereby exposing a fatal flaw in Precrime and destroying his own creation. With the murder already predicted and Precrime officers closing in, Lamar chooses to shoot himself in the chest. Earlier in the film he told Witwer, “I don’t want John Anderton hurt” – and despite all his lies, it seems that this statement was completely honest. Realizing he has a choice, Lamar decides to take his own life rather than kill John, because he cannot bear to witness his legacy being dismantled.

Had Lamar chosen to shoot John, he would have been arrested for the murder (along with the murder of Anne Lively), but he also would have proven that Precrime works. Leo Crow’s supposed murder was spun as a “human flaw” in Precrime, due to officers failing to reach the scene in time, and John Anderton’s death would have been treated the same way. Precrime could still have gone national, and Lamar’s legacy would have been preserved. In choosing not to shoot John, Lamar proves very publicly what John had already discovered earlier in the movie: that a person who knows their future is able to change it, and therefore the precogs’ visions are not certain. This leads to Precrime being disbanded and the precogs being released.

The Real Meaning of Minority Report’s Ending

Like many other stories about time travel and futuristic visions, Minority Report asks the question of whether the future – once known – can be changed. Terminator: Dark Fate answered this same question by suggesting that certain things are inevitable and will happen despite efforts to avert them; after Sarah Connor prevented the rise of Skynet, another computer system called Legion took its place and led to a similar downfall of humanity. When Leo Crow dies in almost the exact same way that the vision predicted, despite John choosing not to kill him, it seems that Minority Report might be drawing a similar conclusion.

Danny Witwer criticizes Precrime at the start of Minority Report, asking how they can be certain that a murder would definitely have happened. In response, John rolls a ball towards him. When Witwer catches it in order to prevent it from falling, John posits that the fact that he caught it doesn’t change the fact that it was definitely going to fall. Unlike the rolling ball, however, John and Lamar are able to choose not to fall (metaphorically speaking). The element of human agency in the equation is what makes the precogs’ visions not entirely certain, and is also responsible for the creation of minority reports.

Along the way, Minority Report also questions the ethics of punishing someone for something that they were going to do but haven’t done yet. A favorite topic of ethical debate is whether or not it would be justifiable to go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby. The action is generally said to be flawed in two respects: first, that killing baby Hitler is no guarantee that some other person will fill the place in history that Hitler did, with the same outcome; and second, that even if killing baby Hitler would prevent the Holocaust, you would still be killing an innocent baby. In Minority Report Precrime faces the same dilemma, and justifies locking up future murderers on the basis that there’s no reasonable doubt that they wouldn’t have killed their victim. The ending of Minority Report proves that such reasonable doubt exists, making the case that no one’s path in life is completely predetermined, and people can choose differently even when it seems like there’s no turning back.

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Hannah Shaw-Williams
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Hannah has been with Screen Rant since 2013, covering news, features, movie premieres, Comic-Con and more! You can follow her on Twitter @HSW3K

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