The Adjustment Bureau

This sci-fi thriller is a cool throwback to the days before special effects dominated the movies.  It is a story of two people who accidentally fall in love, despite the fact that this was not what the secret 1940s-esque bureaucratic pupetmasters who control every individual’s fate had in mind for them.  The terrific premise by Philip K. Dick is extremely well executed by first time director Nolfi (who wrote the strong scripts to the sequels Oceans Twelve andThe Bourne Ultimatum).  Damon and Blunt play magnificently together in this film.  They have a charged screen chemistry that has been lacking in Hollywood movies--even in straight-up romance movies--for the past 15 years.

Since the film relies on notebooks and bowler hats instead of computer generated spectacle to convey its sci-fi universe, there is more time available for developing an affecting love-story and an intriguing moral dilemma than we usually get in films these days.  I saw this movie the same week as Duncan Jones’ sci-fi mind-bender Source Code, and I’m sure that effects-heavy-but-logic-light film with Jake Gylenhall will be much more successful and well reviewed that this one. But Source Code is one of those sci-fi films that is all premise and fails to give the audience enough content for that premise to hold up.  The Adjustment Bureau, on the other hand, uses its simpler premise to explore larger ideas about love, free will, and destiny.  Not that this is a deep film--it’s just a fun film.

Nolfi uses the city of New York in an exciting and creative way.  Urban landscapes are seldom used in sci-fi anymore, which is a shame.  Years ago, filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, George Lucas and Ridley Scott cleverly used modern and classical architecture to convey the future in ways that were far more distinctive than what the typical digital film comes up with.  In fact, most modern films look just like each other regardless of their genre.  Nolfi has also written some enjoyable supporting roles and populated them with actors we usually don’t get to see enough of, like John ‪Slattery‬ and Terence Stamp.  The film’s third act unfortunately does not quite live up to its first two, but The Adjustment Bureau is still ultimately very satisfying, especially for 40-and-over cinaphiles like me.