What?

Rating: 4/10 (1 December 2019)

I went into this film with high expectations. I'd read a lot of positive reviews and seen a lot of high ratings for this film, and I was really hoping for a smart, entertaining thriller that might even make me think. I finished the film very disappointed.
The plot follows a man who desperately wants to be with the woman he loves, but a mysterious, clandestine group of apparently otherworldly beings attempt to make sure the two never get together.
I have to give credit to the director and screenwriter, both of whom are George Nolfi. He is no stranger to writing films, but this is his first directorial effort. He adapted the story "Adjustment Team" by legendary science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick (which I haven't read), and this is the result.
I'll say my positive comments first. I wasn't entirely un-entertained. The film had an interesting idea, and it was well-directed. It looked very nice, and Matt Damon and Emily Blunt both threw themselves into their roles, and they had excellent chemistry, and both made it almost, ALMOST, rise above its shortcomings. I also want to give credit to Anthony Mackie, who is actually a pretty great actor. I liked him in this and "Point Blank" (2019), and he actually has way more range and versatility than people probably realize, since most people only know him from the Marvel movies, which often drown their actors' performances in special effects. Anyway, the film was interesting, and well-cast. But for such a "high concept" film, it should've delivered much more than that.
Now to my criticisms. I didn't get the point of the film at all. Everyone already pointed out the obvious Christian imagery and metaphors in the film, but the messages seemed so muddled. I couldn't tell if George Nolfi was a Christian or not. I myself am a Christian, but even trying to view it objectively, I was confused, to say the least. It appears that Nolfi heard about Christianity second-hand from someone on the street, and decided to make a movie about it. Everything in the film only portrays the most basic elements of Christianity without ever explaining the importance of it. It's actually a little offensive.
The titular "Adjustment Bureau" is eventually revealed (indirectly) to be angels working for "The Chairman" (God), and they carry out The Chairman's tasks and whims, and make sure the plans that he writes fall into place. Sounds like an interesting concept right? Well that's about all you get. The Chairman decides he doesn't want the two main characters to be together, for no apparent reason. He'd previously written that they should be together several different times, but then without any explanation, he decides they shouldn't be together, and his minions work off trying to make it happen. So the film portrays a fickle version of God who changes his mind all the time and can't make decisions, and when he does, they're dumb decisions that happen seemingly for no other reason than to hurt people. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God changes his mind all the time and makes decisions for no reason. Nothing in this film attempts to accurately portray the motives of God, or even an interpretation of them rooted in actual Christian texts.
Also, why does God, sorry, "The Chairman", carry out such important plans through such bumbling henchmen. If he supposedly makes everything work, are we really as an audience supposed to accept that this supreme being's plan could come crumbling down because of one of his employee's missteps. I mean, the one angel misses the main character because he doesn't see him come out of a building, and that sets off the film's entire chain of events. Come on. They eve say in the movie that the main characters met because of chance. So now both chance and predestination coexist happily because of the efforts of a being who is so powerful, yet he makes mistakes like this, well, fairly often, according to lines in the film.
Oh, and don't even get me started on the hat and water plot points. So these beings are supposedly smarter and more powerful than humans, yet they're unable to detect anything going on around water, and they're only way of magically transporting is through their hats? I get that the writers needed a way for Damon's character to even the odds in the end, but it's so arbitrary and silly (the water element too).
The film ends with the two main characters being allowed to stay together because they "fought so hard that they inspired The Chairman". If this Chairman is so powerful, how come he can be so easily beaten, and influenced, but such lesser, insignificant life forms whom he controls so easily? Is the underlying message here that God can be beaten and his mind can be changed if one fights hard enough? Don't make me laugh.
The final voiceover narration says that The Chairman's ultimate goal, most likely, is for us as humans to write our own plans. This is contradictory to earlier scenes in which members of the Bureau told the main character that they tried giving humans free will several times, but that it always ended in disaster. So if the Chairman's goal was for us to write our own stories, why didn't he do that from the beginning? Is the message that we as humans can eventually evolve to the level go God by becoming mature and smart enough to handle our own lives? If that's the case, what makes The Chairman so special? This also is a slap in the face to basically anyone with even the slightest idea of the God depicted in the Bible.
Often, thriller films will attempt, and occasionally succeed at, distracting the audience from its narrative flaws with its style and flash, often in the form of intense and fast-paced scenes, or action sequences. This film had no action sequences (a car crash and a few punches are the only instances of violence), and the only intense moment really was the chase at the end. When a film puts all its eggs in the basket of its story, then the story needs to hold up. Without anything to distract me from its issues, I was left to enjoy the story, which I already expressed my problems with. The characters, as I said, were good, but only could go as far as the story allowed them to.
All in all, this film, while entertaining as a thriller, devolved into a muddled, contradictory mess. It seemed like Nolfi just spewed his ideas onto a page and went with it, deciding to forego script revisions, which is a shame, since this could've been a great script and film with a few more rewrites. I couldn't even tell what Nolfi's religious convictions were. He seemed to bash Christianity one minute, and sing its praises the next, without giving any substance to any of the ideas on display here. I think that he should've only hinted at the spiritual/religious aspect of this, and just left it more up to interpretation as to the nature of the Adjustment Bureau, and had it more like "The Truman Show" (a superior film) where a man discovers his life is being orchestrated. I wish the love story would've had more of a focus, without the lofty mixed religious messages bringing it down. Adding the spiritual aspect without any apparent knowledge of the source material just made it look dumb. I wanted to like this film, I really did, but for such a "high concept" film, it was too lackluster for me to take it seriously.
Nolfi said in an interview that "The point of the film was to raise questions." Well I had many questions by the end. Namely "what was the point?" and what was he thinking?" If you're looking for a smart thriller that makes you think, especially if you're a Christian and want to ponder Christianity itself or see a non-Christian intelligently ask questions, look elsewhere. This is just a middle finger to anyone who takes their religion seriously.