The Adjustment Bureau is an enigma to me. Made out by the trailers as a film that is Inception meets The Bourne Trilogy I had high hopes of an action thriller that had a certain level of intelligence and an exhilarating story that pulled the audience along at a frenetic pace and had me thinking once I had left the cinemas.
Sadly, I walked out feeling none of those things; The Adjustment Bureau has been so falsely advertised it almost feels criminal that the studio got away with it. The best way to describe the movie is that it is a sci-fi love story; a romance destined to never happen told through the eyes of man who loves Blade Runner and Minority Report.
The Adjustment Bureau has a lot of strong elements, the acting of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt is brilliant, and the relationship between the two feels much more fresh and real than any other romantic couple I've seen in the cinemas for a long time. I have thought it for a long time but if there is many better actors in Hollywood than Matt Damon I would be surprised. He is always riveting, making whoever he plays interesting and complex and David Norris is no exception; I was 100% with his politician come 'action' hero. Also it has a fantastic plot on paper; a secret society of people who influence time and life to correct what comes to pass to ensure that it plays out as they see it should do.
Now I turn my thoughts to the negatives. The main one, which is where The Adjustment Bureau falls in my opinion is that it fails to adequately explain how this society works and who they are answering too. It all feels like an idea that the film-makers have chosen not to explain, but as such we have to buy facts like if you are wearing one of their hats you can walk through any door and appear in certain places. It all ends up feeling quite silly and when the climax of the movie arrives and you expect everything to be explained and to make sense you realise that the writers didn't actually know where they were going; or if they did they failed to sufficiently bring across any sort of interesting or decent explanation. You should walk out feeling Wowed but you end up feeling subdued and I'm sure that's not what they were going for. Some reviews have said that they walked out thinking about the ending and it's meaning in a positive way (ala Inception) but to me I felt they missed that spark, explanation or excitement to actually get to that point. I had to write my own ending in my mind rather than actually having to think about the one they gave me.
Also disappointing is the lack of action, the entire movie chooses to focus on Norris' political career or his attempts to understand the society and find Blunt's Elise but it does everything in a talky-talky way. For a movie that supposedly was Inception meets Bourne you have to frown when the biggest action set piece is running through some doors with a hat on whilst some old men wearing similar hats are supposedly 'chasing' him. It was all so close to a great movie but sadly for me 'The Adjustment Bureau' failed on most levels to give closure to a great premise and to create excitement in a storyline with so many possibilities to create it. It never kicked itself out of first gear and ended up stuttering about ten minutes in.
I also found a lot of the acting of the society members also laughable, and when you consider tat there were a few recognisable faces in the team (Terrence Stamp for one) you can't help but wonder how such talents felt so flat, boring and stupid. They weren't menacing, foreboding, scary, interesting or anything. They were what they were; men in hats walking around and talking.
For a movie which focuses on adjusting your fate to influence the future I have some good advice; do not bother watching this movie and your future will be unaffected in every way possible. It's best forgotten... and you won't even care.
As I noted at the start, 'The Adjustment Bureau' is an enigma; a disappointing one at that. What a shame.
4/10
Adam
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