Plot hole: Anderton's wife gains entry into the jailhouse using her husband's eyeball - but he's already locked up inside, so his eye would not still have access to enter as it pleased. Any place anywhere that would have any sort of security system requiring anything from a simple passcode to a card key to a retinal scan, would immediately delete the user in such instances from all rights. And would also certainly report on any attempted use of such (retinal scan, pass code, whatever). (02:00:45)
Factual error: When Anderton jumps on the back of the jet packed cop, the thrust can sizzle burgers a foot away, but nothing happens to Anderton's jacket or shoes or anything. Even if he is hanging onto him on the side, he's still close enough. And how come the cops themselves don't get scorched by their own pack? I can believe them using asbestos pants in the uniform, but not Anderton's civvies. (00:47:55)
Suggested correction: There's a difference between the heat directly at the focal point of a flame and the heat next to the flame. You could try it with a match but I don't recommend it). If you put your finger next to the flame, then compare that to putting it directly above it almost touching the flame. You'd feel the difference.
Plot hole: Burgess frames Anderton for Witwer's murder, using Anderton's gun in Anderton's house, but Anderton has an airtight alibi; at the same time as the murder, he was arriving at his ex-wife's home. His ex is even on the phone with Burgess, who asks if that's John arriving with Agatha.
Suggested correction: This is all a matter of trust and knowledge. At this point the precogs aren't available so they don't know who killed Witwer, the word of Burgess is enough for the precrime team to believe it was Anderton, especially considering everything that was going on. All the precrime team wants is get Anderton and put the halo on him. There is no trial, no interrogation of witnesses. The team simply don't see Anderton can't have killed Witwer and they don't care as they no longer act as real cops anymore (only Witwer did). They might find out later, but Anderton's escape changed that possibility anyway. It's not a plot hole that things went as they went.
Plot hole: Anderton getting to Crow pivoted on seeing the Precog visions of Anderton killing Crow. But it's a causal loop. How did it happen the first time without the vision? To top it off, Anderton had Agatha in the room. Later Burgess points our to Witwer that there are no signs of Precrime descending on him because the Precogs can't see him about to kill Witwer because of their separated condition. However, that's the exact same condition the Precogs were in when Anderton was supposed to shoot Crow...so how would it be seen in pre-vision?
Suggested correction: The pre-vision of Anderton killing Crow happened before the Precogs were seperated, for Witwer's murder the pre-vision came too late. It's paradoxal but the fact there was a pre-vision of the Anderton-Crow murder, it was going to happen. But at the last second Anderton made a choice not to, something which the pre-cogs can't see as Agatha explained to him, the pre-visions are only 1 possible outcome of the future. Thats the flaw in the system.
Plot hole: Lamar makes his crime look like a glitch. But the pre-cogs must show these two as two separate murders. And they should give two sets of wooden balls.
Suggested correction: A ball is created when the precogs identifies the killer and victim. However they get their visions randomly and seperately, Agatha being the most powerful one but they have to work together to identify a victim and killer. They put visions together and eventually balls with names will appear. The pre-crime team, led by Anderton, then pieces the visions together to find the location and then go after it, that's all they do, technicians are the ones that bring the visions together for processing by the pre-crime team. The visions they got were seen as "echos" and disregarded before the precogs were able to identify the killer. If they had it would put Burgess as the perpetrator. But since it looked exactly the same as the previous one they didn't allow the precogs go futher into the visions and not put them together. Agatha did have the vision of Burgess but Burgess removed those vision from the system.
But the previous "one" was not a murder so it should not justify a vision (it was only a staging). The real murder is committed by Burgess and it was premeditated, so a brown ball with Burgess' name should have popped out.
The first murder is not a "staging." Quoted from the film: "all you'd have to do is hire someone to kill Ann Lively, someone like a drifter...someone with nothing to lose." Burgess hired someone to kill her so they do have the intention to commit murder, hence the vision. He knew it would be stopped the first time and then the second time would be seen as an "echo" of the vision of the murder that was stopped and erased before a ball is produced.
Staged may have indeed not been the right word. A blame murder or false flag murder may be a better term. Planned in order to point the finger at the wrong person for the murder in any case.
Even staged murders are put in visions, same with the one Burgess tried to set up Anderton with. If someone is killed, the precogs get visions, but they don't know the context (the biggest flaw with the system of course). The visions come before the balls and if the engineers think it is a echo they will discard those visions and prevent the precogs from identifying the victim and killer. If they had the time, indeed a brown ball would be formed. Remember that premeditated murders come much earlier to the precogs in vision than emotional ones, so that was the reason why those visions showed up so soon after the staged one, adding to the idea it was an echo, perfectly calculated by Burgess.
Continuity mistake: When the cheated husband says "I forgot my glasses", the lover is on top of the wife, and tries to sneak by bouncing way up and then turning to his left. The jump is cut and the angle changes to a close up of the lover, but this time he is right next to the wife, as if he had just moved aside. No bounce. You'll need to freeze the image to notice it.
Suggested correction: If you have to freeze frame, or use slo-mo, to see a mistake, it's not a valid entry.
Plot hole: In the scene where Anderton is talking with Hineman, she says to him that "You will bring down the [Precrime] system yourself if you manage to kill your victim. That would be the most spectacular public display of how Precrime didn't work." Shouldn't she be saying "If you manage to not kill your victim"? (01:01:30)
Suggested correction: Well, if Crow did die, then Precrime wouldn't have worked because the whole point is to stop murder from occurring at all.
Ether way it is a hit against precrime. If he does not kill Crow then it shows that the vision may not come true so you do not know if someone would really have killed someone else, outside situation like with the cheating wife at the start where they interrupted the murder. If Crow is murdered then it shows the system is flawed, which would not be as bad as the first as you would still be stopping a lot of the murders.
I can't tell if this reply is suggesting the correction is wrong or stating the line should be "not kill", making the mistake valid. By not killing the victim, that shows how Precrime is actually working and that knowing the future means you can alter it. If the murder occurs, it would weaken Precrime's stance and support that it can prevent crime.
No if he chooses not to kill Crowe then that means that the visions are just a version of the future, and thus not the actual future. So all the people with the halo on them are locked up wrongfully, as they may have decided not to do it like Anderton did, so the system collapses. That was the point, and it did. Hineman's remark is about the idea that precrime stops all murders, unless Andrton does manage to kill Crowe. The system then is flawed but like the previous commentor says, they still prevent most murders instead of all of them, which would count for something.
Continuity mistake: At the start of the movie, two wooden balls are created to name the next victim and killer. After the balls are created, they are dull and unpolished, but their travel through the tubes shows them to now be highly polished and shiny. (00:01:55)
Suggested correction: After being created they are encased before going down the tube and unseen. They could have easily been polished during this time before then rolling down the tube.
Plot hole: Burgess was supposedly willing to commit murder to avoid losing one precog critical to the precrime effort. Indeed, the precogs are "offline" while Agatha is unavailable. But no system dependent on a key individual can last long or be scalable. At the banquet it is suggested precrime will somehow "go national." For that to happen there would need to be a way to create more precogs, which requires creating brain-damaged children of drug addicts.
Suggested correction: Or, in the mean time since his project's success Burgess has been able to collect the funds and influences to actually breed precogs or some other form of procuring them. In whatever way possible as Burgess is not a moral or ethical man.
Other mistake: At the beginning of the movie, we learn that the precogs "do not see what you intend to do, only what you will do" and that they cannot see suicides. At the end, Burgess intends to kill Anderton but does not go through with it; he commits suicide instead. Given these two facts, the precogs should not have seen Burgess' confrontation with Anderton at the end, and a red ball should not have been created.
Suggested correction: Burgess intention was in fact to kill Anderton, but the knowledge of the precogs predicting his murder attempt, the conflict inside his conscious, and the sound of the arriving helicopters made him change his mind at the last second, just like Anderton did in the apartment. The point is they have a choice, and having knowledge of that, only that, changes the future and makes it different from the visions.
Suggested correction: I thought that this was a mistake as soon as I saw it on screen, but reconsidered. It's perfectly possible that there was some, probably human caused, delay in updating the security system. After all, there wasn't a rush to do it since they already had the chief on ice. Maybe the sleep jail was still on a legacy system without automatic updating. Just assuming that in the near future that all systems are all perfectly integrated and instantaneous does not validate this as a mistake.