It's Sinatra's World – If We Only Knew to What Extent!

Rating: 3/10 (6 March 2011)

"The Adjustment Bureau" addresses favorite, and much-contested, themes: the role of fate, or chance, or free will in our lives. Theologians, scientists, theists and atheists have puzzled over these questions for thousands of years. The film posits an official bureaucracy that massages everyday human activities – whether or not rising young political star David Norris (Matt Damon) spills coffee on his shirt during his morning commute through a park, whether Elise Sallas (Emily Blunt), a dancer, falls and sprains her ankle onstage – in order to achieve the outcomes the Adjustment Bureau desires. It's a fantastic premise, which the film thoroughly wastes.
David Norris is a rising political star; Elise Sallas is a rising dancer. They meet and fall in love at first sight. Their love defies the desired ends of the Adjustment Bureau. The Adjustment Bureau may be carrying out the will of God, and its caseworkers may be angels. The film never makes it clear. Hats give the Adjustment Bureau's caseworkers their power. Yes, hats, exactly the kind of snap-brim hat that Frank Sinatra made famous in the 1950s. (Thus the title of the tribute book, "The Way You Wear Your Hat.") Too, Adjustment Bureau case workers refer to their boss, who may be God, as "The Chairman." They don't mean Mao – this must be a reference to Sinatra, nicknamed "Chairman of the Board." I'm sorry, but this film was so boring, it sent my mind down these trails.
When the Adjustment Bureau made its presence known, and revealed its near omnipotence over David Norris' fate, I didn't care. I felt no anxiety for David or Elise. The film evoked no sense of mystery, not even the shiver you get when you think of a friend and that friend immediately phones you. I kept thinking of other films that introduced supernatural, fate-altering others into average mortal's lives. Cary Grant as the angel Dudley in "The Bishop's Wife" caused more of a sense of wonder and awe. In "Portrait of Jenny," another movie about a fated relationship, there's a scene of ice-skaters in Central Park. The scene is very wholesome and suitable for family viewing. It's shot in black and white. Even so, with no special effects, it creates a powerful sense of the weird that "Adjustment Bureau" never matches.
Matt Damon plays, as he always does, Matt Damon: an oversmart, internal guy who keeps his cards close to his chest and doesn't so much relate to others as manipulate them to his own purposes. He was brilliant at this in "Good Will Hunting" and he's been good at it ever since.
Emily Blunt is not his best partner. She's a great dominatrix, as she was in "The Devil Wears Prada," or "Young Victoria." Her crispness never penetrates Damon's emotional armor, as did Minnie Driver in "Hunting" with her over-the-top emotionality.
I never felt that David and Elise were experiencing the kind of love worthy of the risks they take in the movie, and I really did not care whether they were together at the end or not.
Because the movie didn't grab me, I noticed all the plot holes I would not have seen had I been swept up in movie magic. The Adjustment Bureau teams are thrown off their game by rain. But they're shown to be almost omnipotent. Why rain? Throw me a bone, here! Hats make them powerful? HATS? There are simply too many Adjustment Bureau personnel. They're like a bumbling team of Keystone Cops, chasing about, and accomplishing very little. They don't intimidate or impress us. They don't make us go, "Wow!" Any discussion of fate, chance, free will and God invokes huge questions. Why does God allow the innocent to suffer, for example? Do we really control our own fates, or are we merely puppets in the hands of the Gods? The movie attempts to address this in a monologue by Terence Stamp. He says that the height of civilization was the Roman Empire. Yes, that same Roman Empire that crucified six thousand slaves along the Appian Way, and entertained its masses with scenes of wild animals feasting on human flesh. Stamp then denigrates the so-called "Dark Ages," a misnomer intended to make the Christian Europe that arose after the fall of the Roman Empire look bad. Oh, how silly.
In order to establish that David Norris is a man on the move, the film uses fake news clips of real personalities, including Jon Stewart and other television news commentators. The careful and extensive inclusion of these real personalities betrays the film's failure. Who cares if Jon Stewart is in a movie about love, fate, God, chance? Don't give me Jon Stewart and Mary Matalin; I can see them on TV. Make a work of art that makes me think something I've never thought before.