Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

‘Free Will’ or ‘Destiny’? This is the question that Director George Nolfi’s film adaptation of the Phillip K. Dick short story ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ is asking us to pick a side on. A film that is one part high concept drama, one part love story and part chase thriller. Some parts work to perfection, other parts not so well.

Matt Damon plays the character of New York congressman David Norris, soon to be New York State Senator David Norris… that is if it wasn’t for the cursed New York Post, on the eve of the election, running a front page picture of David doing something that a responsible grown man about to be passing laws for his nation simply should not be doing.

Now David needs a to craft a concession speech and this is where he meets her, the beautiful dancer Elise Sellas (Emily Blount) who was hanging out in a men’s bathroom for reasons we can’t get into, but it only takes David about two minutes worth of conversation and a kiss to realize that this is the one. But as quickly as he meets her, she’s gone. David proceeds to give his concession speech, which by all accounts is the best concession speech in the history of the planet earth, and life goes on according to The Plan.

But what is this Plan? Apparently we all have a predetermined path that we must follow and the Adjustment Bureau is here to keep us on that path. This is where meet Adjustment Bureau agent Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) who is David’s case worker, so to speak, and Harry has a simple job this particular morning and that would be to keep David from getting on a city bus. Simple but critical. Harry Mitchell, Worst Adjustment Bureau Agent Ever.

On this bus David reconnects with Elise which wasn’t supposed to happen and now David is sick in love. Nothing else matters to David except being with this woman, a situation so dire in regards to The Plan that the Bureau and Harry’s superior Mr. Richardson (John Slattery) are forced to escalate the matter and expose themselves to David, tell him the ways of the world and threaten to lobotomize him if he leaks a word of this to anyone. David understands but still, nothing else matters. Plus it isn’t helping this Plan that fate keeps driving these two together.

Eventually the situation has gotten to the point that the Bureau has to call upon the steely eyed Thompson (Terence Stamp) to fix this mess. And General Zod indeed fixes this mess. Sure, David’s miserable, Elise’s heart is broken but the world will be better for it. But does David care about the world? No he does not. And with the help of the World’s Worst Adjustment Bureau Agent he’s going to have this woman or at the very least get an explanation from The Chairman of this agency why it cannot be. And now it’s chase thriller time. That I probably could’ve done without.

My friends, there were times in this movie ‘The Adjustment Bureau’… and this is extremely rare… but there were times where this movie was actually intellectually challenging. Admittedly it’s not all that difficult to challenge my limited intellect but regardless, 99.8% of the movies out today don’t to do this and to be honest, aren’t all that interested in doing this. But this movie with its concepts on free will versus destiny wrapped around a quasi religious subtext with the Adjust Bureau agents as angels and the unseen Chairman designing these plans as God was fascinating in its presentation. Some of the dialog and situations setup in support of these higher concepts in this movie, such as Terence Stamp’s character of Thompson explaining the reasons that necessitate the existence of the Adjust Bureau as a lone example, was some good stuff.

Now we come to the love story part of our little romantic, sci-fi, existential thriller. It works in support of the higher concepts of free will because this is what drives the character of David Norris which in turn drives this movie. As a love story all on its own however… I’m not so sure. You would be hard pressed to find a pair of actors as appealing as either Matt Damon or Emily Blunt but I don’t know if the two of them together had the chemistry necessary to convince us that theirs was a relationship that was transcendent. That this was something worth risking everything for and nothing else matters outside of this one thing. I can’t even pinpoint what it was exactly that didn’t work because the two of them played off of each other beautifully… but as friends and not necessarily as lovers. And it’s pretty important that you buy into this.

By the end of the movie when it turns into a thriller with our heroes running through magical doors and essentially running from God because they, or at least David refuses to do what God wants him to do because God is completely inflexible… things got bit unwieldy and even a tad silly. By that time it got to that point you hoped this Chairman was just wave His or Her all-knowing omnipresent, omnipotent hand and enforce His or Her will and end this nonsense, since we don’t have free will anyway. Or just let these wackos have sex in peace. Something other than a chase scene. Oh well, whaddayagonnado?

But don’t think I didn’t enjoy ‘The Adjustment Bureau’ because there were times where it was just captivating. And times where it wasn’t. But it was more than good enough for me to recommend it. And let me go on record to let this Chairman know that my current plan sucks. He or She needs to adjust that.