The Adjustment Bureau
Director: George Nolfi
Starring: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery
Runtime: 99 Minutes
Rating: ****
This film is showing in York at City Screen. Click here for more information.
Poor Philip K. Dick. In addition to the whole being dead thing, he has to deal with directors who cannibalise his various short stories and novellas to make something more palatable for Hollywood. The Adjustment Bureau is the latest in a long list of sci-fi films based on ideas from the man, ranging from Blade Runner to Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly. All good films, of course, and so is this. Reading the man’s stories, you can see why the movie business keeps coming back to him – there are brilliant central conceits, but no real cinematic vision. Everything’s kept fairly subdued, and it’s this tone that The Adjustment Bureau takes a departure from.
What we are presented with is a brilliant idea: what if God, in all his varied forms, was at least slightly incompetent, slightly more human than he or she’s usually portrayed? This is the underlying idea of the piece, framed as it is in the life a 21st century New York congressman (Matt Damon) and his accidental infatuation with a contemporary ballet dancer (Emily Blunt). It is this relationship – which accidentally forms thanks to the negligence of a dozing member of the Adjustment Bureau of the title, a shadowy group of smooth-talking bureaucrats who keep everything going according to plan – that is the primary focus of the film, but thrown in the mix is a fascinating assortment of philosophical questions that rarely get added into romances or thrillers.
Part of what makes this film work is how understated the sci-fi element is. To all intents and purposes, this is a thriller, albeit one that spans several years and has a brilliantly acted relationship between the two leads at its heart. Whenever one of the men in hats (the hats are important) appears, it feels like an added bonus; without them, we’d have a perfectly acceptable if admittedly uninspiring love story. And what a bonus it is. Each of the figures desperately trying to control the congressman’s life is understated, smooth and never feels contrived; Anthony Mackie leads, closely followed by Mad Men’s John Slattery and Terence Stamp as a terrifying senior adviser.
There are, of course, criticisms, as there have been with every incarnation of Philip K. Dick’s work. One feels that the central intellectual idea could have been explored a little more; towards the end, it largely takes a back seat to typical action movie fare (albeit in a fresh and surprising style), and the conclusion doesn’t sit quite right, even though everything is tidily wrapped up. Overall, though, this is a fun and sometimes thought-provoking film, and while it doesn’t reach the greatness of Blade Runner it fully deserves to sit alongside some of the other Philip K. Dick-inspired blockbusters.
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