As much as I respect Emily Blunt and Matt Damon as actors, I find The Adjustment Bureau an unpleasant experience. We are asked to believe that there could be an organization such as The Adjustment Bureau that monitors each individual's fate so that we stay on path. What path? To where? A metaphor for too much government control?
"We make things happen according to plan. We monitor the entire world, "Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) says after David Norris (Matt Damon) is kidnapped, blindfolded and strapped in a stereotypical leather chair reminiscent of one that could be used to execute criminals. That chair that we've all seen repeatedly in interrogation scenes.
It all begins with David Norris who is running for the U.S. Senate and who just lost. He meets ballerina Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) accidentally when she is hiding in a men's room and they fall in love. At first sight. In a men's room running from a cardboard cut out criminal Harry Mitchell and his Adjustment Bureau, nefarious men who want to control David Norris who will run again for the Senate at which time they plan to have him programmed to do what they want and win so that they can 'rule the world'. Please. We've seen this before. Shades of Manchurian Candidate.
A few years pass and David Norris accidentally meets Elise on a bus and arranges to see her again, but The Adjustment Bureau blocks his attempts to see her. Enter Thompson played by the magnificent Terrance Stamp who exudes evil to a T, but even Stamp can't resurrect this turkey. He is Harry Mitchells' boss in the evil Adjustment Bureau and knows that if David Morris falls in love with her and they consummate their love with a passionate kiss, his group of henchmen will not be able to control David's mind or the nation's future.
Far-fetched? Yes? Manchurian Candidate? Yes. The idea that love conquers all is the plot of the film and flimsy as that.
Chases abound and are well filmed and have their own intensity, but when you realize you are merely along for the bogus ride, you feel a bit duped. New York is filmed mysteriously and creatively and the direction by George Nolfi is not the problem. It is the script. Which is silly yet we are supposed to believe sinister. George Nolfi wrote the adaptation of the screenplay from a short story by Phillip K. Dick titled The Adjustment Team.
Elise Sellas becomes a successful ballerina and has a dangerous fall. Elise dances with creative passion, but all your desire to care for the characters runs amok when you are required to think about the foolish plot. The Adjustment Bureau tries to frighten David Norris from rescuing her and seeing her in the hospital after this accident. Elise and David are bound with a crazy glue kind of love despite all the road blocks put up by the so-called sinister men blocking their union. Is their love part of fate? Or will The Adjustment Bureau be able to derail their dynamic duo of lust? You have to see the film to find out how it ends. If you can sit through it long enough to get to this point.
re: My falling asleep... could it have been because of the almost 45 minutes of ads and trailers before we were allowed to watch a movie we had paid to see?
Give your points but I can make up my own mind. Thank you.
haven't you wondered at times that things are a little too precisely ironic? that maybe you are just a rat in some other being's maze or experiment? and maybe that being is cruel or hateful?
just sayin'. maybe i need an adjustment.
looks like an old 'twilight zone' (newer series) episode, "how time works"
A Matter of Minutes
A young married couple, the Wrights, wake up one day to the sounds of construction. When they get a good look at the world around them, they find everything has stopped. A crew of blue-clad construction workers are busy removing their furniture and replacing it with new. The Wrights run outside to find things being rebuilt that have already existed. The workers set up a crash, and distribute litter in the streets. The Wrights start to go in the direction of the voice barking out orders to the workers until the voice tells them to chase the Wrights.
The plot structure is based on archetypal ancient Tragedy and Comedy that Philip Dick brilliantly adapted and morphed for modern times.
Ancient Tragedy and Comedy are the deep, archetypal plots of the human experience and the human condition.
Your failure to appreciate what the plot of this movie is about says more about the ignorance and withering of OUR ability to engage with the deep human plots of life than it does about the artists.
You are asking the movie to reflect your experience and for artists to limit their idea of what our story is to what you experience. How about expanding your idea of what your story is, instead?
Ask not how movies reflect your life; ask how you can expand your idea of the meaning of life through movies and stories.
How original is this?
Boy Meets Girl ...Boy Loses Girl... Boy Gets Girl back again...Ho Hum!