Movies / Movie Reviews

The Adjustment Bureau

By Hervé St-Louis
March 6, 2011 - 17:23

David Norris is a young candidate for the senatorial seat in the state of New York. But on the eve of his election, the revelation of errors of judgments committed at a frat party cost him his election. When a young woman, Elise Sellas catches him speaking to himself in the men’s bathroom, before he delivers his defeat speech, David is inspired again and seeks to find her again. But finding Elise and is not part of the plan and the Adjustment Bureau will do anything to set them apart and make sure each can continue on to the plan that was decided by the chairman. Will David and Elise ever find love?



If you’ve read The Amazing Spider-man comic book since 2009, you will find the plot in The Adjustment Bureau familiar. Mary Jane and Peter Parker have been separated thanks to Mephisto although their love is undying. But that’s about all the commonality. The Adjustment Bureau is the Matrix for the smart folks and a borderline chick movie with the love story mixed in it. Guys won’t care much for the love angle, but they will care about the conspiracy stuff. It’s really a smart movie. I knew it was gonna be a special one, like Inception, so I made sure I didn’t watch any preview or read any review prior to watching this film. It was the right decision.



The protagonist, played by Matt Damon is provocative. Damon really can act. Here, he’s playing a bad boy. I probably wouldn’t have cast him for the role, as with some actors that are big in Hollywood, it’s easy to forget the character that they play and just focus on who they are. Here, Damon shows he has the kind of range to play a young wolf and make you forget he’s Matt Damon.



The concept of The Adjustment Bureau is quite interesting. They are basically like angels fixing odds so that humanity may go on a certain path. This movie was like watching Touched by an Angel, where they aren’t really do-gooders, but have some kind of purpose. What’s more interesting about this movie is the questions raised about free will and even more philosophical questions about whether we have a role and what’s our ultimate purpose. If you’re a deterministic, you’ll love this film. If you’re more of an atheist, and think that there’s really no point to anything and we just come in and out and try to make it work on an individual basis, this movie may not be for you. And that’s what I thought was wrong with this film. It tried to make everything fit in and look great, but it did so by focusing on an European ethno-centrist perspective. So China, Persia, even some island in the Pacific Ocean didn’t matter as much as what the Romans were doing in Europe. The Dark Ages, matter more than the thriving North African and Muslim civilization that existed in parallel. The Renaissance was more important than the very stable Chinese civilization or whatever was happening in South America before Europeans landed there again, in 1492. Slavery which occurred concurrently with the age of reason mattered less.  The Adjustment Bureau and the short story it is based on, The Adjustment Team make the kind of broad statement about history that conspiracy theorists like to read about. Everything is magical and you can see a determined thread throughout history and the evolution of civilization, provided of course that you abide to an European-centrist view of the world.



Rant over: This film wasn’t much of a thriller either. It reminded me mildly of The Game, the 1997 film starring Michael Douglas as the lead actor. At the time some of my baby boomer acquaintances thought this movie was defining for them and was close to their aspirations. I thought The Game was boring and incomplete. I have a feeling that the producers of The Adjustment Bureau were trying to recreate for Generation X adults what The Game did for boomers. They are trying to give us a road map and something we can latch on. It could work. We’ll have to find out if this movie is just a fad or something that will stick with people in their 30s and 40s.



I was expecting a Matrix or an Inception in terms of special effects. That didn’t happen. It’s a human movie first built on a human scale and the few effects there are discreet and well-realized. Originally, I was quite impressed by this film, but now, I’ll rate it less than if I had written the review when I saw it. It’s still good and it promises to add to the pedigree of Matt Damon, but also supporting actors like Anthony Mackie and Emily Blunt.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12