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FILM REVIEW – THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU (2011)

Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story, The Adjustment Men, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. There have been great PKD movies, Bladerunner & A Scanner Darkly, as well as dreadful ones like Total Recall and Minority Report. The Adjustment Bureau is actually quite a good film, marred by a cop out final five minutes when it fails to pitch humanity against God preferring a sentimental love conquers all conclusion that turns the film into an unwitting sentimental sequel to Bruce Almighty.

An up & coming politician, a potential future Kennedy, finds his career set back by unexpected defeat in the polls, but finds inspiration to stand again in future from an ‘apparent’ chance meeting with a beautiful woman, Elisa, played by Emily Blunt. When he sets out to meet her again, mysterious men in 1940’s suits and hats start manipulating events around him, events from whether he will catch a bus to the spilling of a coffee. As they do so, complex diagrams in their notebooks shift around and change, as they push cause & effect and engineer events to create a delusion of human free will. The agents come across as slightly sinister nourish villains from the 1940’s rather than Agent Smith Matrix figures – much importance is given to their trilbies, an alternative to angel wings.

When an adjuster goofs, Damon slips into their realm and sees them in action. They reveal their secret to him but advise him not to see the girl again or they plan to erase his mind. Despite warnings, threats and efforts to block his path, even causing a taxi crash so he will be delayed helping the injured, Damon keeps reaching for the girl. The Adjusters seem reluctant to promote their mind wipe threat, preferring to send in their main trouble-shooter, played by Terrance Stamp. He just gives Damon a straight choice – it is down to his career or the girl. With her in tow, his political ambitions might falter and her future ballet career will also stall, but if he can forget her, both will flourish. Damon determines to fight back, and gets a benevolent Adjuster to show him the power of the hats and use doors to go through dimensions in order to see the girl one last time. He drags her into being able to see the Adjusters and together after she freaks out over it all, they try to confront the Adjuster’s leader, in effect, marching on God (referred to as The Chairman, and having an office in a dimension portal within the Statue Of Liberty) him or herself to plead their case.

It’s here that the films massively tense build up cops out, as we don’t meet God. The Adjusters tell the couple it was all a test of whether their love could conquer fate – and they’ve passed, enabling their destiny to be rewritten, if still manipulated - a great dark existential ending is thrown away in an instant in favour of mush. It’s a shame as it had a lot of potential, though many will dismiss it on assumptions though it very different to that.

There are a few flaws, Damon as a buss-travelling leading politician, and a bizarre spontaneous speech he gives when he loses an election involves him describing how his PR team spent a fortune researching how much shoe scuffing he required to look like a common working class hero. He demonstrates this by picking up a shoe that just happens to be on the lectern ready – if he took off his own shoe it would make sense as no one is expecting his spontaneity. Why the hell is the shoe ready to use in this way?

Great performances, from Damon, Blunt and John Slattery in particular but the ending ruins the film and feels like an act of cowardice by the production team.

The film on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau

Arthur Chappell

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