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This week I’ve seen first time director George Nolfi’s adaptation of the Phillip K Dick novel Adjustment Team. What at first glance is a promising little thriller turns out to in fact be a little disappointing.
Director: George Nolfi
Starring: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery and Terrance Stamp
Rating: EE
It’s been billed as Bourne meets Inception. I don’t really rate the Bourne films, but Inception was by far the best movie of the last couple of years. Perhaps, because of the advertising, this film was never going to meet my expectations. Take note advertisers: don’t sell a film to me by comparing it to another film unless you can stand up and defend your claim.
The Plot:
Humans do have free will and chance to get them through life, but for some of the more important moments there is an otherworldly team of ‘angels’ who make adjustments to the world to keep us on the right track. Due to a mistake by Harry (Mackie), the adjuster assigned to bad boy Congressman David Norris (Damon), he walks in on one of these adjustments. Due to Norris’ never give up attitude, Harry’s boss Richardson (Slattery) reasons the only way to stop Norris telling the world is to ‘level’ with him, giving a nice little exposition speech to the audience. The only catch is, because of the mistake, Norris met the love of his life (Blunt) that he was never meant to be with. When chance brings them together again, the adjusters must do all they can to keep them apart.
So why the low rating? Well it’s to do with the writing, the story itself while conceptually interesting is quite week once examined. !!!PLOT SPOILERS!!! From now on. Sorry, I try not to do this most of the time but there’s no way around it here. Firstly Norris takes the news that his life is being controlled by mysterious men in 50’s style suits amazingly well. Secondly, he proceeds to beat these adjustments with extraordinary ease. After each adjuster fails, the ‘case’ is simply passed up to that person’s boss and we never see them again. First from Harry to his boss Richardson (a real shame we don’t see more of Slattery). From Richardson to Donaldson, who in turn gets in a specialist, Thomson (Stamp) who doesn’t seem to have any more power than Harry. As an aside, why isn’t Harry called Harrison? Then there’s Emily Blunt’s character Elise Sellas. The first meeting of the two leads is horribly contrived. Sellas dared herself to gate crash a wedding in the same hotel where Norris is giving a speech, and she’s hiding from security in the gents while Norris is practising said speech. At first I thought it was a nice touch that she was the only character to casually swear. Normally in Hollywood movies swearing is used as a device to show some one is angry, and it’s just not naturalistic. Here though it just seems like a part of her character. That is until you look at the big picture. Because you know essentially that the Adjusters are trying to help Norris with his political career and often visit him in an attempt to persuade him to leave Sellas, the chase sequences are completely devoid of tension and although visually interesting there’s no emotion to go along with it. In the whole film the only threat is that Sellas twists her ankle. Only the occasional swearing is keeping The Adjustment Bureau from being a family friendly PG that kids don’t want to see because it looks like an adult film and that adults don’t want to see because it’s rated as a kid’s film.
Please leave a comment to let me know what you thought, and watch out for a cameo from the Baby’s Day Out villain who isn’t famous.
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