Spielberg: Minority Report part 1
WHAT DOES THE PROTAGONIST WANT? John Anderton, like many Spielberg protagonists, has seen his family shattered. His son has been missing for many years, and that trauma destroyed his marriage. John is unable to put his family back together, and so he has, again, like many Spielberg protagonists, become obsessed with his work. As it happens, John’s work is being a homicide detective in the future, so he catches murderers by sifting through the thoughts of a trio of "precogs" who live in a swimming pool in his office. As a bonus, due to the nature of the precog’s thoughts, he is able to catch murderers before they actually murder. This he does to comfort himself about the loss of his son, and to please his "work father" Lamarr Burgess, the man who co-created the "precog" detective program and gave Anderton his job. Anderton is absolutely convinced of the rightness and justice of his job, and so when the precogs "accuse" him of a future murder, Anderton finds he must clear his name for the future murder of a man he’s never met.