Getting things straight

Rating: 9/10 (30 June 2013)

This intriguing film is based upon a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick entitled 'Adjustment Team', which alas I have not read. Several of Dick's tales have made it onto the screen, including BLADE RUNNER (1982), TOTAL RECALL (1990), and MINORITY REPORT (2002). He is a very cinematic author. Lest anyone get the wrong idea about his surname, it does not mean what you think, but is the German word meaning 'thick'. However, Dick was not thick either. So perhaps we had better drop that line of discourse. He must have been teased enough while he was alive, and why should he have to endure it now that he has been dead for 31 years? (He died at the age of only 53, a great loss to science fiction.) Here we have a film where the lead, Matt Damon, is allowed to do more than merely run, jump, shoot, and flee. Here he gets to do a bit of acting too, always welcome. And at his side is the sleek, alluring, and let's face it rather mysterious Emily Blunt. How and why can she be so different? Let's hope she never gets 'adjusted' and remains an elusive dryad, which is how she comes across. (I wonder if these Blunts are descended from the famous Blounts, Sir Henry being one of the great pranksters of the 17th century, and his nephew Charles stirring things up even more by publishing books about reincarnation, to drive the clergy wild with frenzy and rage, always a fun thing to do.) And those of us who are MAD MEN addicts (see my review) can only be thrilled to see one of our favourite actors, John Slattery, slatterying his way through the film with his inimitable style (I won't call him a dryad, but he too is one of those people who is different from all the others). How did Slattery perfect his droll style? An interesting subject for investigation. As for the story, well, anyone who has watched all five seasons of the amazing TV series FRINGE (see my review), will be familiar with observers in hats who come from another dimension. Of course, Emily Blunt comes from another dimension too, but that's a different kind of dimension, known as the Indescribably Fascinating Woman Dimension, which is not parallel to but is orthogonal to the Male Dimension (males and females forming two axes at right angles to each other which occasionally intersect, or so the mathematicians might try to convince us, though I myself doubt it and think that an asymptote is the best we can ever hope for.) It seems that there are these higher powers who want things amongst us humans on earth to go according to 'the Plan', and they occasionally have to make slight adjustments and intervene in our affairs. Matt Damon, scamp that he is, catches them doing this one day and they tell him that if he ever blabs, he will be toast, since humans aren't supposed to know about what goes on behind the scenes like that. Damon was supposed to be with Blunt, but then 'the Plan' changed, and she was written out of the script by the men in hats. But Damon is having none of that. (And what sane man would?) So he just won't give up and keeps pushing and pushing, insistent that he loves Blunt, or to be Blunt about it, cannot live without her. This makes life hell for the men in hats, one of whom turns renegade and assists Damon, just like the character called September in FRINGE. The film is really excellent, well done, and the silly things like the hats are accepted because the whole thing just sweeps you along, and what difference does a silly hat make when you are really concerned about Damon and Blunt, freedom, true love, and all those things we hold dear, not to mention holding Blunt and calling her 'Dear'. And aren't those amusing doors that you can open in this film and step through and enter what they call 'the Substrate', so that if you are in New York, as all these people are, you can go direct from 5th Avenue to 10th Avenue in an instant (not that any sensible person would ever want to go to 10th Avenue, much less the sub-acqueous 15th Avenue which is beneath the Hudson River and most people don't know about except those with gills) simply by stepping through a kind of wormhole. Funny how John Wheeler's wormholes have entered into public culture like that, so that even Matt Damon and Emily Blunt can pass through them as easy as you please in order to try to defy 'the Plan' and stay together. Will they succeed? How can they possibly do so with all the paranormal forces arrayed against them? Or can True Love truly conquer all? This film really is a 'good 'un'. Oh yes, and the director is George Nolfi, who also wrote the screenplay. It was his first film as director, so let's see lots more, please. Apparently his next will be about meeting a mysterious woman on Facebook. And speaking of which, I just did a Facebook name search and there he is. I propose to coin a new adjective: nolfacious, to describe a Nolfi film. Let's hope that all his films from now on will be relentlessly nolfacious, blunt, and with a matt finish, and will all have a MAD MEN star. What about Christina Hendricks next time? She's prettier than Slattery and just as droll. She can contact me on Facebook anytime, and I promise to 'friend' her without delay and reach out to her through a wormhole, defying time and space in both nolfacious and a dickian manner. (Which reminds me, one of Wheeler's collaborators on wormholes was R. H. Dicke, but he was also no thickie.) In order to appreciate movies nowadays, you must study geometrodynamics.