Very good film based on a Phillip K Dick work

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2011)

Not as close to the source material as was A Scanner Darkly, in this case the story we have here is loosely based on the short story "The Adjustment Team" by Phillip K Dick. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt spearhead a great cast including John Slattery and Terence Stamp, at first you don't really know what is happening here, just a hard-luck story about a guy, loses an election due to bad luck and nosy Republican media, meets a girl on Election night, but although it would seem like this is what is happening, it is not.
Instead, the very Fabric of Reality is ripped... Who are these guys with the Hats... Cousins of The Watchers in "Fringe"? What is great about this film is the connectivity between a science fiction story and a religious story, except that this film is neither, although aspects of both are present.
This film joins the ranks of other reality-questioning films like The Matrix, The 13th Floor, and Dark City - Except that this is not a world-construct, it's simply the world. And so concepts that might be more suited to a science fiction or religious film are brought into the grasp of people not familiar with either genre, it is simply a film about people, and these things that are going on are not supernatural or of alien design, it is more like, "This is how the world is constructed".
Matt Damon goes up against the masters of time and space and beats them. So rather than say, "Foreknowledge vs Predestination/Freewill vs Determinism" you can say "Freewill AND Determinism" - As Damon shows when he asks, "What about Free Will?". Actually the entire premise of this film is that we do actually have Free Will and Choices... Regardless of any entity which may have knowledge of future events.
This is a wholly NY Movie, filmed in NY, by people in NY and as such is in my list of top NY movies. It looks good, it is acted well, it is directed very well, and a lot of my favourite Character actors are here, including Anthony Ruivivar and John Slattery - Although this is more of a breakout film for Anthony Mackie, who does his job very well here... Starting out as a minor character, his importance is made evident later.