Throughout this movie, I kept thinking how utterly Philip K. Dick the story is; half a minute into the credits, turns out I was right. I guess unless you happen to be Anne Rice nobody really cares if you wrote the book (Spielberg’s last outing, AI, was based upon a story by Brian Aldiss).

As a Steven Spielberg film, Minority Report possesses a wonderful blend of art and commercialism. Nobody really does that like Spielberg, art that does not come at a sacrifice in interesting, MGM’s motto aside. Without a doubt, this is a damn good thriller, along the lines of the original Jurassic Park or Jaws.

The story goes that in the wonderfully commercial future, complete with retina recognition technology everywhere and personalised advertisements that make full use of it, they have managed to entirely stop murder. This is done through the use of three Precogs (short for pre-cognitive), who foresee the event, and a team of Police folk who rush in and arrest the pre-criminal before he commits the crime. After a successful six year trial run in Washington DC, the plan is to go national, if all goes well with a visit from the representative of the Attorney General.

Right, here comes the thrilling part, Tom Cruise’s John Anderton, Big Boss at the Precrime unit, suddenly finds himself next on the list, about to commit murder on someone he does not even know. Convinced he was set up, he attempts to figure out exactly what is going on. The plot then weaves through one mystery after another for all of 2½ hours, until the ending where everything is explained neatly.

With a notable mention to Samantha Morton, who did a stunning portrayal of one of the precogs, the star of the show has got to be the fx. Hollywood has come a long way since Jurassic Park, and this is one of the movies that prove it, giving a future so vivid and plausible that it feels right at home (Spielberg had assembled a bunch of experts to conceptualise the world of 2054).

In addition to enough art – the use of motif, colour, camera, film and blah blah – for any student to write entire essays detailing; for the true connoisseur, this film has a handful of references to the works of recently departed Stanley Kubrick, friend of Spielberg, the original mastermind behind AI and whose last film, Eyes Wide Shut, starred Cruise.