Based on a story by sci-fi icon Philip K. Dick, writer of the story that Blade Runner was drawn from, Minority Report shares some characteristics with that earlier classic, namely a dystopian vision of the future, a crackerjack mystery-thriller plot and a fair bit of lofty philosophizing. But Minority Report also has Tom Cruise, guaranteeing that it will not be the box-office flop that Blade Runner originally was.

Cruise is detective John Anderton, leader of the "pre-crime" unit in Washington, D.C. The year is 2054 and Anderton's team utilizes three psychics-or "pre-cogs," as they are called-to learn of murders before they are committed. Armed with images downloaded from the minds of the pre-cogs, Anderton and gang decipher the somewhat scrambled info, figure out where and when the attacks will occur, and arrest the would-be perps, sometimes only seconds before the murderous acts are to take place. Thanks to the pre-crime program and the infallibility of the pre-cogs, they've made Washington murder-free for the past six years. All is going swimmingly for the team-there's even talk of taking the program national-when, out of the blue, lead pre-cog Agatha (Samantha Morton) delivers up an image of Anderton killing someone he's never met. The chase is on, with Anderton simultaneously trying to avoid capture and figure out who set him up and why.

For a Spielberg film, there are a lot of surprises in store, beginning with the characterization of Tom Cruise's Anderton. He's divorced, depressed and damaged by the disappearance of his young son six years before. He's a drug addict (!) whose messianic attitude toward his job brooks no room for moral quandaries about the ethical questions involved in arresting people and imprisoning them BEFORE they do anything wrong. Thankfully the film does deal with this issue-and it is an issue of particular relevance to post-September 11th America, where people are being arrested all the time in the name of the "war on terrorism."

While the philosophizing about determinism versus free will and other ethical concerns is never less than trenchant (writer Scott Frank has also been responsible for the smart Steven Soderbergh film Out of Sight, among others), what propels the film along is its wonderfully complicated plot, its great production design and a plethora of inventive-and believable-details evocative of the Big Brother-like atmosphere. The sleek cars, the spider-like tracking devices used by the cops to find people, the use of eyeballs instead of fingerprints as the key identifying feature of a person (which leads to some pretty nifty and gruesome ways of avoiding detection)-all are plausible and chillingly entertaining at the same time.

If Spielberg is to be faulted it's for the same old thing: an occasional descent into juvenilia. He can't resist the odd moment of gross-out humour more indicative of a frat-boy mentality than the attitude on display throughout the rest of the film. But perhaps I'm just quibbling; overall Minority Report is a good example of commercial filmmaking at its best. Spielberg has finally made something that adults can sink their teeth into and come away satisfied.