Die Hard

John McClane, a detective with the New York City Police Department, arrives in Los Angeles to attempt a Christmas reunion with his estranged wife Holly. He is taken by limousine driver Argyle to her workplace, the highrise Nakatomi Plaza. While Argyle waits in the building's parking garage, McClane joins the Nakatomi Christmas party, where he meets Holly's boss Joseph Takagi and sleazy co-woker Ellis. He finally finds Holly and they immediately get into an argument over her use of her maiden name Gennaro. Holly leaves McClane in a small room near the party.

A gang led by the suave and refined German terrorist Hans Gruber invades and secures the building, under the pretense of gaining the release of various terrorist operatives. The party-goers are subdued and it is revealed that the group are actually thieves; their plan is to use the false terrorist crisis to cover their theft of millions of dollars in bearer bonds from the building's security vault. When Takagi refuses to provide the vault combination, he is killed and Theo, the gang's technical mastermind, begins disabling the sequential vault locks, warning Gruber that the final electro-magnetic based lock will be impossible to bypass.

McClane manages to slip away during the round-up of the party-goers, albeit without his shoes. His attempt to summon help via the building's fire alarm brings him into confrontation with gang member Tony. He kills Tony, prompting the man's vengeful brother Karl to lead a hunt for the policeman through the building. McClane captures a radio and manages to convince a skeptical 911 operator to send a patrol unit, and then secures the attention of responding Los Angeles Police Department officer Al Powell by dropping the body of one of his pursuers onto the hood of the officer's car. He also takes a collection of C4 explosives and detonators off the body of another gangmember.

Nakatomi Plaza (in real life, the Fox Plaza).

The LAPD responds in force, but this merely accelerates Gruber's timetable. With the police led by the incompetent Deputy Chief Dwayne Robinson, Powell quickly proves to be McClane's only useful ally outside the building. A SWAT team and an armored transport are easily and brutally repelled, to which McClane retaliates by bombing two of Gruber's men along with an entire floor of the building with some of the C4. The blast unnerves Ellis who reveals McClane's identity to Gruber with the hopes of negotiating his release. He is murdered when McClane refuses to cooperate.

An incensed Gruber orders Karl to track McClane down and recover the detonators while Gruber goes up to the roof access, where he finds himself in an unexpected face-to-face confrontation with McClane. Gruber attempts to pass himself off as a hostage; the ruse is distraction enough that Karl and his team surprise McClane in an ambush. McClane kills two more gang-members but is forced to flee, leaving behind the detonators and severely injuring his feet. As he tends his wounds, Powell tells him via radio how, in the past, he had mistakenly shot a child "armed" with a toy gun. His grief had him heading for a career as a desk officer.

Outside, the spectacle attracts massive media attention, while the FBI arrives on the scene in the form of two swaggering agents. The duo order the building's power be cut, which serves only to deactivate the final lock on the building's vault, just as Gruber had planned. He "negotiates" with the FBI to release the hostages on the rooftop via helicopter transport. The agents plan on double crossing the "terrorists" with a surprise attack using gunships (with little regard to the hostages' welfare), while Gruber in fact is planning his own treachery; using the C4 to destroy the entire upper structure of the building, killing all the hostages and covering the gang's escape.

McClane investigates the roof access, wondering about Gruber's ealier presence in that area. He discovers the primed C4 and tries to alert Powell, only to be cut off by an attacking Karl. After a vicious battle, McClane leaves Karl hanging from a heavy chain. Back outside the building, an irresponsible TV reporter named Richard Thornburg accidentally alerts Gruber to the fact that Holly is McClane's wife. He takes her aside as a special hostage as his remaining men raid the vault and Theo goes to the parking garage to prepare the gang's getaway ambulance. Argyle, who has kept up with events via his limo's radio, rams the vehicle with his limousine and punches Theo unconscious.

McClane storms the roof, driving the hostages back down to safety with warning gunfire. The FBI mistake McClane for a terrorist and fire at him, while Gruber proceeds with the detonation of the C4. McClane escapes the blast by tying a fire hose around his waist, jumping over the side of the building, and shooting his way in through a window a couple of stories down. The gunship crew, including both FBI agents, are killed.

A battered McClane confronts Gruber one last time high up in the tower, with Holly being held at gunpoint. McClane tricks Gruber with a faked surrender and shoots the villain, who falls from the building to his death. As McClane and his wife leave the building, the seemingly-indestructible Karl reappears one last time, only to be gunned down by Powell. Holly and John are approached by Thornburg, still relentlessly angling for a fresh scoop. Holly punches the reporter and the couple departs the scene in Argyle's battered limo.

Die Hard 2

The story begins on Christmas Eve, 1990, exactly two years after the Nakatomi Plaza incident. John McClane is at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.. As he waits for his wife Holly to arrive from California, airport police tow away his in-laws' car and give him a parking ticket. Hanging out at an airport lounge, McClane sees a group of men, dressed in Army fatigues, and at least one of whom has a gun in his jacket, pass a package between them and disappear into a baggage handling area. He follows, and a fight ensues in which McClane kills one of the men.

McClane confronts the head of airport police, the hotheaded Captain Carmine Lorenzo, who dismisses McClane's report as punks stealing luggage, despite the fact that one of the assailants was wielding a rare porcelain gun (supposedly) capable of evading metal detectors. McClane storms off to investigate on his own, taking fingerprints from the corpse and faxing them to his friend, LAPD officer Al Powell, who runs them through several databases. The resulting records indicates that the man had been declared officially dead even before the fight, leading McClane to suspect that he had been part of a plot to seize control of the airport.

Which is exactly the truth: as weather conditions worsen, a vengeful rogue US Army officer, Colonel Stuart, prepares to hold the approaching planes and their passengers and crew hostage until he can free a former Central American general and drug lord, Ramon Esperanza, as the deposed despot is arriving at the airport under guard for trial by the United States government. Stuart has set up his operational base in a nearby church and has hacked directly into Dulles' communications and air traffic control.

McClane sneaks into the airport's control tower and confronts the head of air traffic control, Trudeau, just as Stuart commences his operation and takes control of the airport controls. McClane is chased out from the tower; as he descends in the elevator with reporter Samantha Coleman, she tips him to the presence of Stuart. McClane slips out of the elevator and into the underground maintenance area of the airport, where he gains assistance from an airport janitor named Marvin.

Trudeau and his controllers contact the approaching planes and inform the cabin crews (without mentioning the terrorists) that they must circle the airport. Trudeau’s communications director, Leslie Barnes, takes a team to a new antenna outpost at the skywalk to restore unbugged communication with the planes. He and Lorenzo’s SWAT team are attacked by a detachment of Stuart’s men. Fortunately, McClane heard about the auxiliary outpost while in the tower, and just as Barnes is about to be killed, McClane emerges and kills Stuart’s men. Stuart retaliates by crashing a British jet, killing everyone on board.

McClane returns to the underground maintenance level, where a two-way radio dropped by one of Stuart’s crew tells him that Esperanza is about to arrive in his now-commendeered plane, who has killed his guard and the pilots. McClane rushes to the runway and briefly apprehends Esperanza, before Stuart and his men show up to retrieve the general themselves. McClane hides in the cockpit of Esperanza’s plane, but Stuart and his crew toss grenades inside, forcing McClane to strap himself into the pilot’s ejector seat and escape the resulting blast by engaging the eject function.

An Army Special Forces unit arrives at the airport. Their leader, Major Grant, once served with Stuart and claims to know his tactics. Barnes surmises that Stuart’s command post is near the airport, and he and McClane find the church where Stuart is hiding. Shortly after McClane kills one of Stuart’s guards and takes possession of his submachine gun, Grant and his squad show up and a gunfight ensues. Stuart, his men and Esperanza escape on snowmobiles. McClane chases after them, but his gun left by one of Stuart's henchmen proves strangely ineffective. McClane checks the weapon and finds that the bullets are blanks.

McClane returns to the airport police station and announces to Lorenzo that Grant and Stuart are actually working together. Lorenzo thinks he is lying and attempts to arrest him, but McClane fires his submachine gun (still loaded with blanks) at Lorenzo. Finally convinced, Lorenzo mobilizes his police to converge on the hangar containing the Boeing 747 that Stuart has demanded as an escape vehicle.

Meanwhile, circling above the airport, Holly has unexpectedly found herself in the same plane as Richard Thornberg, the reporter who had endangered her and John during their previous meeting. As the terrorists' plans unfold, both Holly and Thornberg begin to realize that something is amiss; culminating in Thornberg listening into the tower radio transmissions, learning about the crisis and making a live news report from aboard the plane. The crowds in the airport watching the report are thrown into panic, which greatly hampers McClane's and Lorenzo's efforts to apprehend Stuart. Holly zaps Thornberg with a fellow passenger's stun gun.

McClane hitches a ride in Sam Coleman's news helicopter to the villains' plane, which is taxiing for takeoff. He manages to jump onto the aircraft's wing and finds himself in hand-to-hand combat with Major Grant. During the fight, Grant is sucked into one of the plane’s engines and killed, but Stuart takes up the fight and kicks McClane off the wing. As he falls, McClane opens the fuel hatch on the engine and it starts to dump. He then delivers his classic catchphrase, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" and uses his cigarette lighter to ignite the trail of fuel, exploding the plane and resulting in a fireball. The fire from the aftermath becomes a landing light for the other planes, which all make to the ground safely. Emergency services arrive and begin evacuating the air passengers, including Holly and a badly-shaken Thornburg. McClane and Holly joyfully reunite, Lorenzo tears up McClane's parking ticket as a Christmas gift, and Marvin drives the couple off

Die Hard with a Vengeance

The antagonist in this movie is Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons), brother of Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman, who, like Irons, was an English actor playing a German). Hans was a German criminal who was killed by NYPD cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) at the climax of Die Hard, the first film in the series. It first appears as though Simon is out to avenge his brother's death, but it is later revealed that other motives are at work.

He begins by blowing up a bomb in a department store and telling Inspector Walter Cobb, calling himself "Simon", that McClane must walk through Harlem displaying a sandwich board reading "I hate niggers", or expect 'another big bang at a public place'. When some offended African Americans threaten him, they are held back at gunpoint by shopkeeper and African American activist Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson). Carver gets McClane away, not out of concern for a white man, but that the colleagues of a white cop might go gunning for every black person in the area if one of their own is killed; "One white cop dies in Harlem, tomorrow we got a thousand white cops, all of 'em with itchy trigger fingers." Back at the police station, Simon calls and insists that this "Good Samaritan" has become part of the game whether he likes it or not.

Simon has planted real as well as phony bombs throughout the city, and forces McClane and Carver to participate in a game of "Simon says", which usually consists of giving them information about a bomb and giving them a chance to defuse them.

The first game happens at a public telephone. Simon calls and reads them the As I Was Going to St Ives riddle. To answer the riddle, McClane needs to dial 555 followed by the answer within 30 seconds. They make the call, but are 10 seconds late. Simon laughs and says there is no bomb, since he "didn't say 'Simon Says'."

Zeus and John listening to Simon on the pay phone

McClane is told they have half an hour to go to a phone at a subway station near Wall Street from where they are on the upper west side. To do this, McClane commandeers a taxi and drives through Central Park, and makes a radio call for an ambulance which they follow through heavy traffic. McClane later manages to climb into the subway train from a grating and finds the bomb, quickly chucking it out the train window. Only Zeus makes it to the station to pick up the call. Simon says that McClane's absence is a breach of the rules and the bomb is detonated, however he had intended for the bomb to detonate regardless, since an activation switch was placed on the subway tracks to detonate the bomb once the subway car hit the switch. Only the audience is aware of the fact at this time.

After the bomb is detonated, they must go to another park to answer another riddle. This time, Simon says "What has four legs and is always ready to travel?" Zeus figures out that it is an elephant, and they find a briefcase bomb in an elephant fountain in the park. After a short argument on whether or not to open the briefcase, John decides to open it. When he does, an LCD screen reads "I am a bomb. You have just armed me." Simon then calls them again, telling them that they must use a 5 gallon and a 3 gallon jug to put exactly 4 gallons of water on the bomb's scale to disarm it, which they do in the nick of time.

When Simon next calls, he states that there is a bomb within one of the schools in New York. They must not evacuate schools, but the police start a massive search for the bomb. Simon's next riddle is "What is 21 out of 42?", and Zeus figures out that there have been 42 Presidents of the United States but is unable to remember who the 21st was. Later, a truck driver tells McClane he was Chester A. Arthur, and it identifies a school in which Simon claims to have placed a bomb — it is later found to be Chester A. Arthur Elementary School, the very school where Zeus' two nephews happen to be attending.

As Zeus and McClane are traveling between destinations, McClane catches and reprimands a boy for stealing a candy bar in plain sight. The boy comments that every cop in the city is searching the schools and one could, as the boy puts it, "steal City Hall". McClane abruptly realizes the nature of Simon's plan.

So far the police have been led to believe that all this is an overblown act of revenge. However, it is really a diversion from Simon's real goal: to rob the high-security vault in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which holds the gold reserves of many nations, even more than Fort Knox. The need to search the thousands of schools in New York, none of which are located in the financial district, means that the police, emergency and Federal agencies are all occupied elsewhere. This enables Simon and his army of East European mercenaries to break into the vault and make their escape with a dozen dump trucks filled to the brim with gold bars.

McClane and Carver see through the plan and catch up with the gang as they embark their trucks on board a ship. They are captured and left on the ship with a huge bomb. When McClane first sees this bomb, he realizes that there is no bomb in a school - the bomb that police found in the school is an elaborate dummy filled with pancake syrup. Simon advises McClane that "some gentlemen in the Middle East seem to think they'll make a lot of money" when a substantial portion of the world's gold reserves are destroyed. Carver asks what this has to do with killing McClane to which Simon replies, "Life has its little bonuses". The two men are left handcuffed to each other sitting astride the bomb.

At this point they hold a heart-to-heart, with McClane admitting that he and his wife are yet again estranged, and Carver trying to convince him to try to at least call her. They both manage to get off the ship just as the bomb explodes, destroying the ship.

Simon has (via a taped message transmitted over the ship's radio) led the authorities to believe that the gold was still aboard the ship and that the whole affair was a plot to upset the world economy. However, McClane surmises that it is yet another diversion and that the gold is safe elsewhere, based on experience with Simon's brother, Hans. After suffering a horrible headache all day, McClane had finally managed to obtain a bottle of aspirin from Simon himself. Based on Carver's prompting, McClane then calls his estranged wife. As the call is connecting, McClane goes to take one of the pills, and a label on the bottom of the bottle shows that they were purchased from a pharmacy in Quebec, Canada. McClane is forced to leave the phone to pursue Simon, and leaves his wife hanging on the line. This leads the action to a warehouse in Canada where Simon and his gang have indeed taken the gold. There they witness Simon's gang being caught by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police before being attacked by Simon in a helicopter. The final battle ensues and as the helicopter hovers underneath some power lines, McClane cleverly shoots out the power lines with two shots, destroying the helicopter, and sending Simon to join his late brother.

As the film ends, McClane calls his wife on a nearby pay phone, despite worrying about the fact that he left her on hold. The credits roll as the call is connecting.

Die Hard 4

At the start of the film, a terrorist breaches an FBI facility's computer system, and computer hackers are assassinated by the terrorist mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), instead of being paid for their collaboration. The FBI, unaware of the killings, dispatches NYPD Police Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to visit a known hacker, Matthew Farrell (Justin Long), as part of their investigation regarding the breach. Gabriel's henchmen attempt to assassinate McClane and Farrell, but their targets escape. McClane transports Farrell to the FBI's Washington DC headquarters and its head, Assistant Director Bowman (Cliff Curtis), in the midst of a shutdown of the traffic system in DC. The stock market is manipulated shortly afterward, causing it to crash.

McClane is ordered to take Farrell into protective custody, and Gabriel sends more henchmen to kill the pair. McClane and Farrell evade their assassins again, and as the country's infrastructure is threatened with a major break down, Farrell tells McClane the terrorists are initiating a fire sale and that major utilities would be next. The detective and the hacker travel to a power hub in West Virginia to defend it, finding that the terrorists are already there. McClane battles terrorists while Farrell undoes the damage done to the computer system. They are contacted by Gabriel, who finds out that McClane has killed his lover Mai Lihn (Maggie Q) and angrily re-routes gas lines to destroy the hub in a gas explosion. McClane and Farrell escape once more, and on Farrell's advice, the pair visit his hacker friend the Warlock (Kevin Smith) for help. At the Warlock's home, they find out about Gabriel's background and attempt to hack into the terrorist's systems. Gabriel contacts the detective at the Warlock's home via webcam, and he shows that he has McClane's daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a hostage. While McClane distracts Gabriel in conversation, Warlock determines Gabriel's location, at a hijacked NSA building.

McClane and Farrell travel to the NSA building, and the detective combats terrorists while Farrell discovers and tries to undo Gabriel's plan to steal backup financial information from servers in the building. Farrell is able to lock the terrorists out of their server hack, rendering the task incomplete, and then he is taken hostage by the terrorists. With McClane after them, Gabriel and his henchmen flee the building with their hostages. McClane manages to hijack one of the escaping trucks and pursues Gabriel and the hostages. Gabriel renders a hack to deceive the pilot of a F-35 Lightning II jet to attack McClane's truck. The jet engages McClane, destroying much of the freeway in the process, but the detective is able to escape. He tracks Gabriel to a warehouse, where the terrorist is forcing Farrell to undo the encryption at gunpoint. McClane and Farrell are able to kill Gabriel and his men before they force Farrell to decrypt the lock, resolving the crisis. The FBI arrives shortly after to tend to the wounds of Farrell, McClane, and his daughter. The final shot is McClane and his daughter leaving in an ambulance.

Die Hard

At the start of the film, a terrorist breaches an FBI facility's computer system, and computer hackers are assassinated by the terrorist mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), instead of being paid for their collaboration. The FBI, unaware of the killings, dispatches NYPD Police Detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) to visit a known hacker, Matthew Farrell (Justin Long), as part of their investigation regarding the breach. Gabriel's henchmen attempt to assassinate McClane and Farrell, but their targets escape. McClane transports Farrell to the FBI's Washington DC headquarters and its head, Assistant Director Bowman (Cliff Curtis), in the midst of a shutdown of the traffic system in DC. The stock market is manipulated shortly afterward, causing it to crash.

McClane is ordered to take Farrell into protective custody, and Gabriel sends more henchmen to kill the pair. McClane and Farrell evade their assassins again, and as the country's infrastructure is threatened with a major break down, Farrell tells McClane the terrorists are initiating a fire sale and that major utilities would be next. The detective and the hacker travel to a power hub in West Virginia to defend it, finding that the terrorists are already there. McClane battles terrorists while Farrell undoes the damage done to the computer system. They are contacted by Gabriel, who finds out that McClane has killed his lover Mai Lihn (Maggie Q) and angrily re-routes gas lines to destroy the hub in a gas explosion. McClane and Farrell escape once more, and on Farrell's advice, the pair visit his hacker friend the Warlock (Kevin Smith) for help. At the Warlock's home, they find out about Gabriel's background and attempt to hack into the terrorist's systems. Gabriel contacts the detective at the Warlock's home via webcam, and he shows that he has McClane's daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a hostage. While McClane distracts Gabriel in conversation, Warlock determines Gabriel's location, at a hijacked NSA building.

McClane and Farrell travel to the NSA building, and the detective combats terrorists while Farrell discovers and tries to undo Gabriel's plan to steal backup financial information from servers in the building. Farrell is able to lock the terrorists out of their server hack, rendering the task incomplete, and then he is taken hostage by the terrorists. With McClane after them, Gabriel and his henchmen flee the building with their hostages. McClane manages to hijack one of the escaping trucks and pursues Gabriel and the hostages. Gabriel renders a hack to deceive the pilot of a F-35 Lightning II jet to attack McClane's truck. The jet engages McClane, destroying much of the freeway in the process, but the detective is able to escape. He tracks Gabriel to a warehouse, where the terrorist is forcing Farrell to undo the encryption at gunpoint. McClane and Farrell are able to kill Gabriel and his men before they force Farrell to decrypt the lock, resolving the crisis. The FBI arrives shortly after to tend to the wounds of Farrell, McClane, and his daughter. The final shot is McClane and his daughter leaving in an ambulance.

Minority Report

The film is set in Washington, D.C. in 2054, where murderers are apprehended based on foreknowledge. This is provided by three psychics termed "pre-cogs", nicknamed Agatha (Morton), Dashiell, and Arthur. The group making use of the pre-cogs is the Department of Pre-Crime, a high-tech policing division who arrest criminals predicted by the pre-cogs. Thanks to it, the city has gone six years without a single murder. At the start of the film, Pre-crime chief John Anderton (Cruise) is in the midst of apprehending a suspect, aided by his team. It is revealed that the pre-cogs only relate the time/date of the murder, the murderer's name, and the victim's name. All other facts, chiefly the location, can only be ascertained by clues given by the various images relayed around the time of murder. Images transfer from the pre-cogs' minds to a computer display, where Anderton manipulates the images in a manner similar to virtual reality to better determine how the murders might happen. Anderton is watched by Danny Witwer (Farrell), an observer from the Department of Justice sent to evaluate the system because the country is about to vote on whether to expand the Pre-Crime program nationally.

Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell) looks down on the pre-cogs in their holding tank.

Later Anderton goes to his apartment, where he watches home movies of his deceased six-year old son and his ex-wife. The next morning, Witwer is given a tour of the pre-cogs' chamber. The pre-cogs float in a translucent substance, which helps enhance the images they produce. Anderton stays behind and Agatha suddenly emerges from the pool and grabs him. She draws his attention to the ceiling, which also displays images in a pre-cog's mind, now a woman named Ann Lively being murdered. Intrigued by a murder which he's never seen, Anderton decides to investigate. He learns that the other pre-cogs' images of the murder are on record, but Agatha's recorded images are missing. Anderton tells this to Burgess (Von Sydow), his boss and the director of Pre-crime, who appears unconcerned.

The next day, Anderton finds a new case unfolding: a murder is to take place in 36 hours. This is unusual: because the pre-cogs are public knowledge, few plan to murder someone in any given time; most crimes are acts of passion, decided upon the spot. The victim is a man named Leo Crowe. The murderer is revealed to be Anderton himself. Believing that he is being set up since he doesn't even know the victim, Anderton takes it on the lam. He manages to escape Witwer and his own team in a car factory, and seeks refuge in the country home of Iris Hineman, one of the pioneers of Pre-crime. She reveals that the three pre-cogs were actually the children of people who experimented with a new drug that did serious damage to their bodies, and that the pre-cogs do not always agree in their opinions about the future. On occasion, those convicted of a pre-crime may have an alternative future other than the one where the murder is committed, and, when this happens, the dissenting opinion is left out. Anderton's only hope at proving his innocence is acquiring the hidden "minority report", which Hineman explains is contained in Agatha, the most gifted pre-cog.

Traveling undetected is difficult, since everyone is subjected to constant public retinal scans. Anderton visits a shady doctor (Peter Stormare) to receive an eye transplant. While recovering - during which he must keep bandages over his eyes or go blind -, he dreams of his son, abducted from a swimming pool. He awakens to discover that the pre-crime team is investigating the building with "spyders", robotic eye scanners. He tries to hide in a bathtub full of ice water to mask his body heat, but is scanned. The surgery proves successful, however, and he is not identified. Later, he manages to reach the Pre-crime offices. He takes Agatha out of the nutrient water disrupting the pre-cog hive mind that makes Pre-crime work and escapes again. Anderton finds a hacker friend who accesses Agatha's vision of the murder, which appears identical to the one he saw earlier. An anguished Anderton begins to wonder if a minority report even exists for his future crime. Agatha then begins showing the Ann Lively murder again, prompting Anderton to realize that she wants him to see who killed Lively, but they are forced to flee as the Pre-crime team enters the building.

Anderton (Tom Cruise) submitting to the "spyders" retinal scan.

Inexorably, Anderton ends up in Leo Crowe’s empty apartment. Searching the room, he finds a pile of photos of children, including his son. Anderton suddenly realizes that there is no minority report for himself, and that Leo Crow is responsible for kidnapping his son. Anderton had pre-planned this murder, a long standing wish to kill the previously anonymous person who took his son. Crowe then enters and Anderton viciously attacks him, eliciting a confession. Agatha tries to convince Anderton that he does not have to kill Crowe, that his future isn't set because he actually knows what it could be, unlike everyone else caught by the Pre-crime system. As he is about to shoot Crowe, Anderton reconsiders and reads him his Miranda rights. Crowe then says that if Anderton doesn’t kill him, Crowe’s family will get nothing: the entire murder was a set-up. Crowe refuses to tell Anderton who set him up, grabs Anderton’s gun to point it at his chest and manages a suicide by cop by worrying Anderton's hand. Anderton and Agatha leave.

The Pre-crime unit arrives and investigates the scene. Witwer sees the photos and raises questions as to what sort of child killer would leave so much evidence lying around. Witwer then discusses his doubts with Burgess and shows him the Ann Lively pre-vision, but two different ones; one from recorded images at Pre-crime, and the other from Agatha, downloaded by Anderton's hacker friend. The images have slight differences, which Witwer infers that represent two different murders; the first was the one Pre-crime witnessed and someone else, who had set up the first suspect, would then, right after the first suspect was apprehended, kill Lively. Witwer intuits that only someone high up would even have access to the pre-cog's pre-visions. Burgess interrupts his analysis by shooting him; since Agatha is with Anderton, Pre-crime is not able to prevent the murder.

Anderton hides in his ex-wife Lara’s house; there he realizes he was set up because of his discovery of the Ann Lively murder. Lively is revealed to be Agatha's mother, and was killed because she wanted to re-unite with Agatha and thus ruin Pre-crime. The police arrive and arrest Anderton. Later, Burgess accidentally reveals to Lara that he killed Lively. Lara then releases Anderton from prison, and as Burgess is giving a speech, Anderton confronts him by showing the audience Agatha's pre-vision of Burgess killing Ann Lively. Burgess takes a gun and starts after Anderton; the pre-cogs are back online, they predict the murder and the Pre-crime team race away to apprehend him. Anderton shows Burgess that he's at a dead end. If he doesn't shoot him, Pre-crime would end due to incorrectly predicting a murder; if he does shoot him, he would be arrested, but it would prove that the system works. Anderton then explains the fatal flaw of the system: if someone knows their own future, he or she can choose to change it. Burgess commits suicide.

In the final sequence, Anderton explains in voiceover that the pre-crime experiment was shut down. All the criminals imprisoned by the program were unconditionally pardoned, although some were kept under surveillance by police for years afterward. The pre-cogs were taken to an undisclosed location where they could live out their lives in seclusion and peace, no longer tormented by their talents. Anderton reconciles with Lara, who is now pregnant.