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John Anderton, the head commissioner of Precrime, is none too pleased to meet his new assistant, Ed Witwer. He is convinced that Witwer wants to take his job. Nevertheless, he gives Witwer a tour of the Precrime Division. Precrime works to stop a crime before it has happened using the help of mutants called precogs. These precogs can see two weeks into the future, predicting crimes before they happen. When a murder is predicted, a card is sent both to Precrime and to the Army. Anderton looks over a stack of prediction cards. To his horror, he sees his own name. Anderton is convinced Witwer somehow planted his name to frame him and steal his job.
Anderton runs into his wife, an officer named Lisa. When he sees Lisa greet Witwer, he fears that Lisa is part of Witwer’s plan. Anderton excuses himself, but Lisa follows him. He confides in Lisa, but while she believes in Anderton’s innocence, she doesn’t believe Witwer is plotting against him. After all, the name of the murder victim is not Ed Witwer, but Leopold Kaplan, a man Anderton doesn’t know. With only a short time before his potential crime is revealed, Anderton plans to escape to a colony planet. He goes home to pack but is accosted at gunpoint and brought before Leopold Kaplan himself. Kaplan was a former high-ranking general in the Army before demilitarization.
Anderton explains Witwer’s plot to Kaplan, but Kaplan decides to turn him in for his own safety. He orders soldiers to escort Anderton back to Precrime. On the way, the car crashes, and a man named Fleming approaches Anderton. Fleming claims he’s part of a group that wants to help Anderton. He confirms that both Witwer and Lisa are plotting against Anderton and gives him the papers he needs to set up a fake identity. The papers are wrapped in a mysterious note that says, “The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.”
Anderton hides at a hotel, where he hears an announcement about his escape on the radio. The report goes into how the Precrime machine works and introduces the concept of a minority report. In computing, when two computers disagree on calculations, their answers are checked against a third computer. Because it is unlikely that two computers will independently arrive at the same wrong answer, the answer that the two computers agree upon—the majority report—is declared correct, and the outlier, or minority report, is discarded. Predictions from the precogs are analyzed in the same way. Anderton realizes that the note must be directing him to check the minority report of his crime.
With help from his coworker Page, Anderton sneaks back into the police station. Anderton discovers that the minority report predicts that Anderton won’t murder Kaplan after learning about the prediction. Meanwhile, Page notifies Lisa that Anderton has returned to the station, and she hurries to confront him. She is convinced of Witwer’s innocence but offers Anderton an escape route via a police cruiser ship. As they escape, Anderton explains the minority report to Lisa. She warns him that Kaplan will use Anderton’s case to discredit Precrime and the police. She begs Anderton to think of the benefit of Precrime to society, but Anderton worries only for his own safety. Lisa draws a gun and orders him to turn the ship around.
Suddenly, Fleming reveals that he’s been in the ship all along. He disarms Lisa and pulls out his own gun. Fleming tosses Anderton his gun and starts to strangle Lisa. However, Anderton notices the gun is a brand-new Army model. He hits Fleming with the gun until he passes out. He checks Fleming’s belongings and discovers Fleming is working for Kaplan. Now that Anderton knows Lisa has been telling the truth, they return to the police station.
Anderton and Lisa tell Witwer about the plot and show him the minority report. Anderton explains that all the chaos has been the Army’s attempt to discredit Precrime and seize power. They hope that Kaplan will use this moment to make a deal with them instead of destroying them. Anderton decides to look at the majority reports of his crime to learn how he was meant to kill Kaplan. Meanwhile, news comes that Kaplan has announced an Army rally. Anderton informs Witwer and Lisa that he intends to kill Kaplan. At the rally, Kaplan warmly tells Anderton that he intends to exonerate him and invites Anderton to come up with him on stage. Anderton readily agrees. Kaplan begins a speech about the human rights violations of Precrime. Anderton shoots him with Fleming’s gun.
In the aftermath, as Anderton prepares for exile on a colony planet, he explains to Witwer that one of the majority reports said that once Anderton learned of Kaplan’s plan, he’d kill Kaplan anyhow. Although this scenario is wildly different from the other majority report—the one that correctly predicted Anderton would kill Kaplan to save Precrime—the computer interpreted this prediction as simply agreeing with the other report that Anderton would kill Kaplan. Witwer worries about whether these strange circumstances means that there’s something wrong with the Precrime computer setup. Anderton tells him that his case is unique, something that can only happen to the Precrime Commissioner.
