The Adjustment Bureau

This is a prime example of a movie trailer giving away the entire plot of the movie it's advertising. There should be a spoiler tag running on the reel before airing so you can cover your eyes and put in earplugs for the next two and a half minutes before your movie starts. So what happens, is this guy, running for some political office meets a girl - the girl, that is - and proceeds to run into her a couple of times. But apparently, he's not supposed to have met this girl, or see her again. This is where the sci-fi comes in as we're introduced to these group of suit and hat wearing group of mysterious guys, who have neat notebooks that chart out the path of people's lives. For Matt Damon, he's veering off the path and these guys are none too please, but he says "forget it, I'm going to fall in love with this girl" regardless of the warnings that it destroys his (political) life. The end of the trailer essentially has him and the girl running through a variety of settings, all the while Matt Damon is wearing this pretty cool (but odd) hat.

And, that's basically the movie. Sure, there's a lot of filler and some interesting stuff - plot, character development, etc - but you got the whole thing in two minutes thirty seconds anyway. The terrible thing is you know you got it all beforehand, but you're compelled to watch anyway. Rightly so, this movie wreaks of covert sci-fi which I would like to coin the term. This is when a movie with some pretty heavy science fiction elements masks itself as a romantic comedy or some such genre so as to appeal to more people. Your sci-fi radar goes off, just as it did with the Adjustment trailer and you (or me, I guess) get really excited. You think: sure, they'll pull in the mainstream audience and then pull the hood off and give me some mind bending science fiction. But you run the risk of getting something like Kate and Leopold or The Invention of Lying, where the quality sci-fi doesn't really materialize. The Adjustment Bureau would be different though, right? I mean, these guys are mysterious and wearing hats, you can't just let that stuff slide.

So, does Adjustment's science fiction materialize? Sure, it does, but it's not the primary focus nor should it be. This movie is well crafted enough and intriguing that you don't really need the answers that the movie provides. And therein lies one issue: too many questions answered. In fact, they don't even try to be mysterious, but quite blatent instead. I was really expecting to be bombarded with "answers" towards the end of the movie, but in the first conversation with a Bureau's "agent" you have an exact idea of what's up in this world. It's not necessarily a bad thing; one of the greatest elements of science fiction is how human and philosophical it can be. It can present viewpoints that you wouldn't normally explore, and leave you with something to think about afterwards. I won't necessarily walk away with a lot of thought-provoking inner dialogue here, but I did find the concepts intriguing. And, the movie was pretty solid.

What are some of the good things to come out of here? Well, it's a well acted movie; Damon can do no wrong. And now I want to see more of Emily Blunt. The chemistry between the two seemed pretty good, which is not something I would typically notice on in a movie, but sometimes when it really works it stands out to me. I kept thinking of Matt Damon's wife seeing the movie and wondering if their relationship sparked so much, but then I realize it's all make believe anyway. Sprinkle some thematic elements of free will (always popular nowadays) and destiny, then add in some great tidbits coming from the Bureau themselves, that is, the doors, and the hierarchy of the organization. As I was watching this with my buddy Cale, I could tell we are coming from the same mindset of science fiction lovers: in that interrogation scene with the agents they refer to the people they're following as "humans" and since it was one of the first bits of clue we were finding out about them, we both looked at each in excitement, knowing exactly what each other was thinking: "did he just say humans?! Then what are they!" Yeah, then it was kind of downhill from there in the excitement department. But, it was a very solid film.