The Adjustment Bureau

Rating: 6/10 (8 August 2011)

Quote what Emily Blunt's Elise Sellas rightly said in the film "I think I'm not a romantic type". So am I, adapted from a short story from Sci-Fi mogul Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau is a more lovey-dovey type than a Sci-Fi saga, maybe in another term, it is a straightforward romantic-chick flick camouflaging with a soft Sci-Fi shroud, (compared with it, SOURCE CODE 2011,is way more hardcore and theoretically compelling).
It's kinds funny to see all the hat-men from bureau engage themselves into the break-up mission with meticulous deadpan, which against the fact that the director clearly has no intention to elaborate the so-called butterfly effect or chaos theory plan. (Thompson, Terence Stamp's character, states that the bureau has been manipulated the globe since thousands years ago, WWI and WWII are the exclusive gaps when they were experimenting on human beings to run the world themselves, what a portentous bluff! We all should thank bureau to stop the war and question what the hell is the 2012 doom then?).
One merit pops up is the strong affection between two leads, despite of Matt Damon's wooden face, neither Matt nor Emily excels in playing lovebirds (cf. Matt Damon in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES 2000, with an alluring Penelope Cruz). This time, with the help of the random doors, their engagement intensifies and we are not allowed to ruminate during a spate of space travels (not so original though, cf. JUMPER 2008).
As a novice in the director field, the screenplay writer of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007) George Nolfi took the thorny task to both direct the film and write the screenplay, the result could be worse, I must say, with visual swiftness and an Utopian concession to romantics, at least he has aimed right on target.