By 2054, freaks who can see the future make sure that every potential murder is stopped before the bloodshed begins.

That's the gist of Minority Report, a fast, dark and entirely engrossing movie that ... doesn't quite add up. Never mind. It's a trip just to look at the thing.

Tom Cruise stars in Minority Report as the head man of the PreCrime unit, the man who runs the office where murderous impulses are 'seen' by psychics and quashed by jet-pack wearing cops.

Then one day, our hero's name comes up with the psychic team responsible for seeing murders before they happen.

Cruise's character is accused of being about to murder someone -- someone he's never heard of, as it happens. Cruise suspects he has been set up, but nobody cares about that.

The chase is on. The cast includes Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max Von Sydow and Kathryn Morris.

Minority Report is a mystery tightly wrapped in red herrings, left turns, bum steers and feints, none of which will keep you from figuring it all out beforehand, but that's okay, because the red herrings, left turns, bum steers and feints make the whole thing worth the price of admission.

Steven Spielberg has taken a basic whodunit and littered the screen with eye-catching, futuristic stuff: Talking billboards and cereal boxes, flying machines, nauseating police prods, iris scans, murderous plants, seeing-eye spiders, storage pods for criminals, giant hovercraft, magnetic cars, cool cell phones and, well, you name it.

Creepily good

Then there are the film noir details locked to the futuristic visuals.

Cruise's character is fueled by guilt and grief, and the sequences that show him medicating or re-living his own pain -- not to mention a soundtrack that features such things as Billie Holliday singing In My Solitude -- underline the dark side.

Minority Report is based on the Philip K. Dick story of the same name. Spielberg builds heavily on the original story without losing the snap and edge that made the SciFi writer's work so creepily good.

Wherever Cruise goes in Minority Report, the joint looks dangerous. This is the same decaying place, with the same air of desperation, we all experienced in Blade Runner.

Minority Report is fight or flight the whole distance, always adrenalized and often surprising, though not necessarily in the area of plot.

Be warned, though -- this one requires your full attention. Even then, you may want to see it twice. (More on Minority Report)

(This film is rated AA)

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