It's a gritty view of Washington in the year 2054, full of hi-tech, low-life, designer drugs and psychics.

A good cop turned bad is on the run. It's raining outside.

Could this be anyone but Philip K Dick?

Dick provided the inspiration for Blade Runner, Total Recall, Impostor and many, many more.

He wrote and wrote and wrote, spraying out ideas in machine-gun style, fuelled by drugs that in turn both fed and powered his paranoid genius.

Give a great PKD idea to a director like Spielberg and put Tom Cruise in the shoes of the obsessive detective and you should be onto a winner...

The brilliant 15-minute opening sequence grabs you by the throat while cleverly laying out our story.

By studying images produced by three psychic 'Pre-Cogs', Pre-Crime unit chief John Anderton (Cruise) is able to piece together evidence about murders before they happen and allow his team to arrive and prevent a killing.

Anderton loves what he does, and is brilliant at it too - in fact, D.C. has been murder-free for six years.

On the basis of this unblemished record, and the belief that the system is infallible, America is about to hold a referendum on taking Pre-Crime nationwide.

But then Anderton is fingered for the pre-murder of a man he's never met. And he runs...

Like much of Dick's work, the movie has its roots in hard-boiled American detective fiction.

Spielberg's thriller is a clever twist on the classic film noir D.O.A., in which a poisoned man has 24 hours to find the person who, in effect, has already killed him.

So what about the cast?

Cruise works well as our not-quite-squeaky-clean cop on the run, turning in a genuinely involving and effective performance which uses his movie star status without relying on it.

Farrell is outstanding. Samantha Morton spends most of the movie lying in a pool but, when finally let fly, she turns in a stunning performance, stealing one of the most memorable scenes in this movie.

We don't often mention cinematographers here at Sky Movies, but this time we need to as the whole movie is dominated by the grainy, bluish, heavily desaturated filming of Janusz Kaminski. He also brought Spielberg's A.I. and Saving Private Ryan to life on the screen.

It's impossible to look at this futuristic flight of fantasy without at least some reference to the (post September 11) world we live in today and the current effort focused on identifying and arresting killers before they strike.

Lesser directors may have been tripped up or distracted by this, but it's a testament to Spielberg's experience that he lays out the arguments without hysteria.

The world Spielberg creates represents a credible extension of the one we know - although it may take us more than 52 years to get there.

In all respects - from taking the best of Dick's ideas to the smallest detail of ordinary life in 2054 - Minority Report has been brilliantly put together.

It probably demands another look to take in some of the detail missed on a first view.

And there's the rub. The movie is pushing two and a half hours and, despite its plot, pace and execution, it feels too long.

Why? Well we have a cast-iron rule here about not giving away major plot twists and endings - so I can't tell you.

But what I will say is that, while Minority Report lacks the poetry and probably the longevity of Blade Runner, it's still a must-see.

Mike Taylor