Rating: ****
Philip K. Dick has provided the basis for some of the most exciting and imaginative science fiction films in the history of cinema: Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Minority Report. Of course, the work of Dick also inspired Next, Paycheck and Impostor, but the author can hardly be blamed for the cinematic missteps made more than 20 years after he died.
But Dick is done right by The Adjustment Bureau, a philosophical treatise about fate versus chance, disguised as a romantic drama with a conspiratorial bent. It’s also a new entry in the subgenre of Matt Damon running movies. Damon plays a U.S. congressman with high political ambitions that realizes there’s more to the world he knows than he ever knew, and the aftermath of that seems to be a lot of running. He runs enough for all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. But then again, if you were chasing the girl of your dreams and she looked like Emily Blunt, you’d probably do a lot of running too.
Damon’s Congressman, David Norris, has a bright political future, and is set to be the youngest member of the U.S. Senate ever, only to be T-boned in the eleventh hour by a scandal involving a gag with his old fraternity brothers. On Election Night, on the brink of his first real loss, David rehearses his concession speech alone in the men’s room, when meets an utterly enchanting woman named Elise (played by Blunt). Elise is hiding from security after having crashed a wedding, and through this chance meeting, David is able to give an impromptu speech that turns his loss around and sets him up for a victory next time.
What David doesn’t know is that despite the love-at-first-site connection between him and Elise, he wasn’t supposed to see her ever again. This is where The Adjustment Bureau comes in. A group of near-omniscient figures that nudge people to where they need to be in order to meet their destiny, Bureau Case Agent Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) is supposed to wait for David to pass by a bus bench one morning and have him “accidentally” spill his coffee. But Harry falls asleep and misses David, and instead David makes his bus and just happens to run into Elise again. Is it fate? Is it written in the stars? Or is The Bureau just getting really sloppy?
David finds out pretty early on about the Bureau and its agents. Richardson (John Slattery) lays it out for him when David arrives at the office early and catches a Bureau adjustment in process. Basically, Richardson tells David, you have bigger fish to fry than romancing some random girl you’re smitten with. And sorry dude, we really meant that to be a one time thing and if you don’t do what we say, we erase your memory like the Men in Black.
I did enjoy the almost laid back quality of the Bureau. They’re not some perfect force of universal bureaucrats, but capable of fallibility and making mistakes. Apparently, David’s not the first guy to find out about the adjusting business, and he probably won’t be the last. Reluctantly, he accepts that he can’t see Elise again. Of course, Richardson burning the slip of paper with her phone number on it made that a bit easier.
The film’s pace moves rather briskly. We flash-forward a few years later to the brink of another senate run by David, and through no fault of his own, he one day looks out the bus window and sees none other than Elise walking down the street. Loophole, boys. He didn’t seek her out, this is completely random and David knows it’s random because the Bureau guys told him seeing Elise was a no-no. Where does fate end and chance begin? The Bureau and Richardson still insist that a life with Elise is not in David’s plan, but why does he keep running into her?
It’s a rare quality that the philosophical divide can create genuine suspense and an edge-of-your-seat quality, but screenwriter and director George Nolfi manages to do just that. You both root for David and Elise to find love with each other, but you fear those consequences that the Bureau agents speak of. There’s a “Come on, just let those crazy kids be” cheering appeal, but you’ve got to wonder why they’d chase a guy all over Manhattan to keep him from the ballet dancer he’s crushing on. But to the viewer though, love wins you over in the end.
That decision is helped with the wicked chemistry between Damon and Blunt, which makes you believe in love at first sight. Blunt comes across as free-spirited but not too flighty, while Damon manages to bring out convincingly the romantic inside the buttoned down politician. I give kudos to Slattery and Mackie for giving their characters some human grace rather than playing things too cold and distant, I just wish someone could have told Terence Stamp as Adjuster boss Thompson that he didn’t have to play it like General Zod.
But the focus in The Adjustment Bureau isn’t on grandiose sci-fi set pieces or scenery chewing overacting, it’s on simple storytelling and character work. It’s charming and witty in its way, and you may scoff at the silliness of the Bureau agents getting their powers through their awesome fedoras, but in keep with the tone of the movie, it makes perfect sense and not contrived at all. It’s a winning movie that does Philip Dick proud, and handily proves that you don’t need a lot of flash or cash to make a compelling sci-fi movie. I don’t know if it’s your destiny to see it, but it should be.
