YOU ARE HERE: LAT HomeCollectionsPilot  TV review: 'Person of
Interest'  Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams get all 'Minority
Report' in their new CBS thriller. The premise is appealing, but
the tension needs to be stepped up.   "Person of Interest," the
new thriller from Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams that premieres
Thursday on CBS, proves, once again, that a great idea for a
television show is not at all the same thing as a great
television show.  The central conceit of "Person of Interest,"
which smartly mines post-9/11 anxieties, is that crimes can now
be detected before they are committed, as in 2002's "Minority
Report," only without the damp and distressing pre-cogs. In
their place is a computer program, designed by the mysterious
Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson), a billionaire genius enlisted by
Homeland Security to design pattern recognition software to sort
through all the newly authorized Big Brotherish social
surveillance for signs of another terrorist attack. The program
also spits out a second group of pa