The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

Who payed the critics

Really Surprised!

Perfectly adorable

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The Adjustment Bureau has a very interesting idea, but only an average execution. The visual effects are well-done and both Matt Damon and Emily Blunt give believable performances, but the film as a whole has a bland feeling to it. It's good, it's just not great.

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick was born a couple of decades too soon. His output of stories and novels mainly in the 1960's and 70's were ahead of their time, or else too far off on a track of their own, even for the world of SF in his day. But now they're a gold mine for some of our most mind-bending movie and TV plots being made long after his death, often invoking nightmarish alternate worlds of hidden levels behind our apparently normal realities. These include Blade Runner, Minority Report, Paycheck, The Man in the High Castle, and The Adjustment Bureau among others.The Adjustment Bureau is fun to watch and it's built on one simple but powerful idea (SPOILERS!): our individual histories and lives are constantly being monitored and tweaked by an organization (the Bureau) to make sure that they don't disrupt the Plan laid down by the Chairman, i.e. a God who's never on screen. Their operatives are an anonymous bunch of men in black suits and fedoras who can use ordinary doors to go from anywhere to anywhere else. (Interestingly the one thing they can't seem to do, however, is travel through time.) One clever device the movie introduces is the set of notebooks the operatives carry around, which have map pages that change in real time as their assigned targets move around, as if everyone in the world has a tracker.This movie builds on its two main stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, who are two of the most attractive, versatile, and bankable actors we've got. For them, this movie is a pay-the-bills kind of role, but they still do good work. Supporting roles by Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, and Terence Stamp are all fine as well. To give the script credit, it openly raises decent philosophical questions about free will and whether anyone, even the Chairman, should change the destinies of two people who will be very happy together. The main thing that I think holds this movie back from being more prominent might just be its budget and its level of ambition. It's generally well executed, but it stays small and at the B-movie level. It's not hard though to imagine a bigger-scale version, because the central idea of Hidden Reality beneath our own and manipulation of lives by shadowy operatives is just too good.One last note -- the storyline reminded me of Isaac Asimov's novel The End of Eternity (from WAY back in 1955, well before Dick was writing). It's essentially the opposite side of the same coin: Asimov's story is built on the idea that lives and histories are 'adjusted' by operatives who can shuttle back and forth in time (but not space). It could make a good movie too.

The Adjustment Bureau intervenes when people deviate from the "plan" for their future selves - no such thing as free will other than choosing a toothpaste brand we are told (when free will is given to humanity without Bureau intervention, humanity near destroys itself and the Earth along it; hence, why the Bureau exists to prevent this from happening). No one knows about them, unless you are Matt Damon who desires Emily Blunt in a non-plan love affair and receives an appearance from them telling him not to pursue her. The Bureau has a Chairman just like the FBI (I am laughing as I type this). Then we go from stupid new wave ballet scenes with an obvious fish out of water Blunt to electoral campaigns for want to be Senator Damon, just as uninspired as Blunt, with the Bureau intervening to keep them apart (apparently Damon will not make President with ditz Blunt as a wife, that was the only believable part of the movie - her character was at best a spun woman child).But wait a minute, Damon's obstinate character says otherwise and after a couple of false starts pursues Blunt in the end. So, let's give this a happy ending by having the Chairman rewrite the plan for Damnon and Blunt to be together and wrap it all up by saying that you have to want free will very, very, very bad to change the plan, and these 2 space cadets managed that with the collective IQ of perhaps 100. Somehow their love swayed the Chairman.The best parts of the movie that were worth watching was when Terence Stamp and John Slattery made appearances. As for the rest, insipid is an understatement. I'm all for Sci-Fi and fantasy, but the ending was just too dumb in the end.

After watching this movie for the fourth time on Blu-ray, I checked a lot of user reviews on Metacritic and here, and none of the ones I read even mentioned the incredible soundtrack by Thomas Newman. If you do like this soundtrack, there is another soundtrack that Newman has done in the same style: "Jarhead". If you like "James Bond" soundtracks, Newman has done the last two: "Skyfall" and "Spectre". "The Adjustment Bureau" is in my top three movie soundtracks along with the 2002 soundtrack to "Solaris" by Cliff Martinez and the 1981 soundtrack to "Thief" by Tangerine Dream. "The Adjustment Bureau" the movie, is also one of my favorites. The romance aspect is very sophisticated and the cinematography of New York City is very well done. Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Anthony Mackie were all excellent.