Review: The Adjustment Bureau

While it doesn’t quite deliver on its intriguing premise, The Adjustment Bureau offers an engaging romance from Damon and Blunt which manifests as a story which is thrilling, entertaining and a little bit different.

The ‘Hollywood pitch’ has been a running joke in the film industry for years. A director or writer selling a project to an impatient and sales-obsessed studio executive as a combination of two popular movies is believed to be common practice, at least satirically. Worryingly though, this is becoming a very real trend in the marketing of films, as if the people are only interested in seeing the force-bred love children of previous blockbusters and classics. This was evidenced most recently on the poster for the latest Philip K. Dick adaption, The Adjustment Bureau, with the quotation “it’s Bourne meets Inception”. I suppose we’re going to have to get used to every film for the next few years which takes a basic philosophical premise and forms it into a narrative device being described, rather brainlessly, as “like that film with the spinning-top and the folding city”. But the use of the equation: Matt Damon + running = Bourne makes this one of the laziest comparisons to date. The first thing you should know about The Adjustment Bureau then is, it is neither of these films.

This is the fifth major motion picture to be adapted from Dick’s works which include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) was based upon, and the novelette We Can Remember It for You Wholesale which was adapted into the Arnie action film Total Recall (1990). Dick’s works are centred around philosophical concepts and he considered himself a fictionalising philosopher. The short story Adjustment Team, on which this film is loosely based, focuses on the question of free will; whether we really have the ability to make our own choices, or if this is some predeterminate universe where they are already decided for us. The film opens with us meeting David Norris (Matt Damon), a charismatic and young politician running for the New York seat in the U.S. Senate. At the final hour, an embarrassing photograph of Norris in a college prank derails his campaign. Suffering a heavy defeat, Norris meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) while preparing his concession speech. There is an instant connection between the two and she inspires him to give a resounding, off-cuff speech, re-establishing his popularity and paving the way to a bright political future. Another chance meeting with Elise and David begins to fall in love. But then the mysterious, fedora-topped men of the Adjustment Bureau intervene, telling Norris that he and Elise are not meant to be together, and that if he persists in pursuing her, he will be ‘reset’, essentially lobotomising him. Unable to give up on Elise, David chooses to out-run his fate.

The Bureau have ill-defined powers which represent the film’s metaphysical, science fiction element. They seem to be able to affect worldly events with the flick of a wrist; summoning taxis, raising floor tiles and causing coffee cups to jump out of hands at their will. They can also use normal doorways to essentially teleport around New York City, although these are only available when wearing their timelessly fashionable hats. Their abilities, or the organisation itself, are never explained in any detail, which works largely to the advantage of the film. At one point it is alluded that they might be angels with them working for the ‘Chairman’ who writes the grand ‘Plan’, part of a general theological allegory that the film represents. There are brief spats of technical terminology passed between the Bureau agents, as well as the interesting representation of the Plan, depicted as a complex, moving schematic in their handbooks. But for the most part, the film refrains from indulging in technical rules, giving just enough structure for the narrative to progress. To do otherwise would detract from the story’s real focus.

This is George Nolfi’s directorial debut, having previously written Ocean’s Twelve and The Bourne Ultimatum. As mentioned before, this is no Bourne film, but in the scarce action sequences, seeing a lot of Damon and Blunt running, it’s clear that Nolfi learnt a lot from working on that project. These scenes are edge-of-the-seat stuff, which is impressive given not a single gun even appears in the film, never mind is shot. In fact, the violence in the film extends as far as two punches thrown by Norris. It’s a testament to the direction then that the film remains entertaining and visually enjoyable throughout, using simple but striking costume design for the look of the Bureau’s men and focusing on Manhattan’s naturally awe-inspiring architecture to emphasise the scale of the transcendental chase. It’s in the Bureau themselves though that Nolfi, also the screenwriter, makes his most interesting stylistic choice. Rather than being the sinister, over-bearing and autocratic organisation that often feature in Dick adaptions, the Bureau are just that, a bureaucracy. We see the Bureau agents talking about needing a vacation, information being above their pay-grade and referring to the chain of command just like in any large company or organisation. Throughout their pursuit of Norris, they never show any contempt or desire to ruin his life, they are simply doing their job. This adds an intriguing twist to what could have been a simple, monolithic adversary.

Depending on what you want from the film, the slightly disappointing element is its exploration of the philosophical content. Unlike Blade Runner, The Matrix or Inception, the film doesn’t make any profound statements about the subject on which it is predicated. There is a scene where the hard-hitting agent (Terence Stamp), brought in to clear up the situation, has a mildly illuminating discourse with Norris about humanity’s need to have its hand held. But the film ends rather abruptly and in an almost uncomfortably neat way, feeling as if the writer didn’t quite know how it should finish. Ultimately though, it proves more an entertainment with an interesting and thought-provoking concept, rather than a subversive piece of filmic philosophy. Crucial to this entertainment, and where the film really succeeds, is the relationship between David and Elise. Damon and Blunt do a truly outstanding job portraying a couple with remarkable chemistry and passion between them, without ever descending into dreary romantic cliché. Instead they electrify the screen with enjoyable repartee and believable devotion, which really brings the audience into their cause, willing them to get the better of their fate.

While The Adjustment Bureau may not say anything particularly profound about its subject matter, it does manage to be a very entertaining ride from start to finish. If you’ve been roped in by the posters and adverts and are expecting Bourne or Inception, you may be sorely disappointed; it’s more a romantic drama than a thriller or sci-fi. But that’s why it’s good. The trend of cannibalising past films into new projects threatens to deprive us of anything original or different. Bourne became popular for bringing realism to the spy action-thriller genre, and Inception showed that a special-effects blockbuster can be intelligent and moving as well. Unlike the way it’s been marketed, The Adjustment Bureau is most like the aforementioned films in that it presents something new; a romance which can be original, entertaining and have a brain.