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The Adjustment Bureau
| Released |
4 March 2011 |
| Director |
George Nolfi |
Starring
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Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Michael Kelly, Terence Stamp |
| Writer(s) |
George Nolfi |
Producer(s)
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George Nolfi, Michael Hackett, Bill Carraro, Chris Moore |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
105 minutes |
| Genre |
Thriller |
| Rating |
12A |
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Damon Days.
Is Matt Damon the most likable movie star of modern times? In terms of looks he’s handsome enough to keep the girls interested but not such a pretty boy that he alienates the lads. In terms of his personal life he seems a fairly decent chap, happily married with a young family and socially conscious but not constantly going on about it. He’s also able to laugh at himself as he’s shown in his skits with Sarah Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel. His career choices have been quite astute too, greatly aided by the cash cow that is the Bourne franchise. In the last two years alone he’s taken on a wide variety of roles in the likes of Green Zone, Invictus, The Informant and True Grit that have shown his range without losing his core audience.
It will be interesting to see if he can keep this level of goodwill going with his newest project. On The Adjustment Bureau he’s reunited with George Nolfi who wrote Ocean's Twelve (perhaps the smuggest film ever made) and co-wrote The Bourne Ultimatum. Here Nolfi directs for the first time along with adapting Philip K. Dick’s short story. Damon plays David Norris, who’s running for the senate and before you say it, no it’s not THAT David Norris.
Norris is a New York congressman running for the senate in 2006. However, an ill-judged prank sees his campaign fall apart and while he is waiting in the men’s room rehearsing his concession speech he meets Elise (Emily Blunt). Elise is a free-spirited dancer and there is instant chemistry between the two. Inspired by her, Norris ditches his concession speech and talks from the heart instead. This makes him more popular than ever and marks him down for a comeback.
The next day, Norris in on his way to work in a new job when he meets Elise again by chance on a bus. He gets her number this time but when he gets into the office he finds everyone there frozen by mysterious men in fifties style suits and hats. He’s captured by them and taken to what appears to be an empty warehouse by their leader Anderson (John Slattery). Anderson informs him that he’s stumbled across a massive secret of how the world is really run by him and his team of “case workers”. They make “adjustments” so that everything runs according to “the plan”. According to this plan, Norris and Elise are not meant to be together so they warn him not to try to contact her again and also not to reveal their existence or they’ll “reset” (lobotomise) him.
Three years pass and Norris is getting ready for another run at the Senate when he spots Elise on the street. He talks her into going for lunch but then the Bureau get wind of it and are on the case trying to disrupt them. Norris resists their efforts but this time they send in a heavy-hitter Thompson (Terence Stamp) to deal with the problem once and for all.
This is a strange film that doesn’t quite know what it wants to be. It’s part quirky romance, part super-natural chase movie. It’s partly redeemed by the appealing performances of Damon and Blunt in the lead roles and good support from Slattery, Stamp and Michael Kelly as Norris’s campaign manager. Technically, the film looks good also and the chase scenes are handled well.
However, you get the feeling the film has been heavily edited and that things move along so quickly to stop the audience questioning what the point of it all is. It’s also let down badly by the ending which is trite and vacuous. It’s slickly done and reasonably entertaining and it won’t damage Damon’s career too much. However he may wish that he’d his own adjustment bureau at his disposal to go back and change his mind when he decided to accept this role.
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Jim O’Connor |
