Movie Review: The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
The Adjustment Bureau is a science fiction thriller with a surprisingly well developed romance.
The movie starts with Congressman David Norris (Matt Damon, The Bourne Identity) giving a speech for his Senate campaign in front of Keating Hall at Fordham University, my alma mater.
If this movie were made a year or two later, I could have been an extra. Anyways, what follows is a fun montage scene showing Norris gaining in popularity, until the montage ends and he’s caught up in a scandal. He loses the election, but before he gives his concession speech, he meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), though he doesn’t get her name, in the men’s room.
Throughout the montage scene, we had seen glimpses of Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie, The Hurt Locker) watching Norris. Mackie plays a member of the Adjustment Bureau, a group of supernatural beings in charge of maintaining life’s order. They’re sort of collectively Godlike, influencing events.
Inspired by his meeting of Elise, Norris gives a very honest speech for his concession, which puts him back on the political map as a potential frontrunner years later.
A month later, as Norris is about to start a new job, Harry has been assigned to spill coffee on him and cause him to miss the bus. He falls asleep, though, and Norris boards the bus and once again meets Elise, this time getting her name and phone number.
He arrives at work and finds everyone frozen and being examined by members of the Adjustment Bureau. He runs to escape, but is captured, and taken by Richardson (John Slattery, TV’s Mad Men). Richardson tells him of their purpose — that they must maintain the Plan, a document created by the Chairman. Because of this, he destroys the note that had Elise’s number on it. If he reveals this information to anyone, Norris will be adjusted — essentially lobotomized.
Three years later, David once again runs into Elise, and confesses he took the bus for three years hoping to run into her. They try to make plans to see each other, but the Bureau tries to adjust their schedules. Norris takes off running, hoping to change the Bureau’s ability to control his choices. Bureau officials are able to go through doorways to transport all throughout the city.
Norris is captured by Thompson (Terence Stamp, Superman II). Norris argues that he should be able to make his own choices, and Thompson informs him that humanity had that ability at the height of the Roman Empire, but society collapsed into the Dark Ages — which, as a medievalist, I can tell you is a demonstrably false interpretation of history, but whatever. Thompson says that Elise will distract him from his ambitions, which fit the Plan, implying that he might be elected President.
Nearly a year later, David learns of Elise’s engagement, and he’s greeted by Harry Mitchell once again, who takes him on a boat (in order to keep the Bureau from hearing them). He tells him that Thompson exaggerated the negative consequences of his relationship with Elise. He gives him his fedora and tells him how to use it to teleport through doors.
Norris finds Elise and they run off with the Bureau in pursuit. David hopes to find the Chairman to end the chase, but before they can, they’re surrounded. They kiss. The Bureau members are gone, but Thompson emerges, and Harry interrupts him with a new adjustment to the Plan by the Chairman. David and Elise are free to leave.
The story doesn’t quite culminate in a satisfying way; I was expecting the movie to go further. Still, the love story works, and Damon and Blunt both give great performances with wonderful chemistry.
It’s a solid movie. It’s not perfect, but it’s much more dramatic and less action packed than you’d probably expect, and that’s largely why it works.
Rating: 7/10
