What is reality?

Rating: 7/10 (21 September 2017)

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick was born a couple of decades too soon. His output of stories and novels mainly in the 1960's and 70's were ahead of their time, or else too far off on a track of their own, even for the world of SF in his day. But now they're a gold mine for some of our most mind-bending movie and TV plots being made long after his death, often invoking nightmarish alternate worlds of hidden levels behind our apparently normal realities. These include Blade Runner, Minority Report, Paycheck, The Man in the High Castle, and The Adjustment Bureau among others.
The Adjustment Bureau is fun to watch and it's built on one simple but powerful idea (SPOILERS!): our individual histories and lives are constantly being monitored and tweaked by an organization (the Bureau) to make sure that they don't disrupt the Plan laid down by the Chairman, i.e. a God who's never on screen. Their operatives are an anonymous bunch of men in black suits and fedoras who can use ordinary doors to go from anywhere to anywhere else. (Interestingly the one thing they can't seem to do, however, is travel through time.) One clever device the movie introduces is the set of notebooks the operatives carry around, which have map pages that change in real time as their assigned targets move around, as if everyone in the world has a tracker.
This movie builds on its two main stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, who are two of the most attractive, versatile, and bankable actors we've got. For them, this movie is a pay-the-bills kind of role, but they still do good work. Supporting roles by Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, and Terence Stamp are all fine as well. To give the script credit, it openly raises decent philosophical questions about free will and whether anyone, even the Chairman, should change the destinies of two people who will be very happy together. The main thing that I think holds this movie back from being more prominent might just be its budget and its level of ambition. It's generally well executed, but it stays small and at the B-movie level. It's not hard though to imagine a bigger-scale version, because the central idea of Hidden Reality beneath our own and manipulation of lives by shadowy operatives is just too good.
One last note -- the storyline reminded me of Isaac Asimov's novel The End of Eternity (from WAY back in 1955, well before Dick was writing). It's essentially the opposite side of the same coin: Asimov's story is built on the idea that lives and histories are 'adjusted' by operatives who can shuttle back and forth in time (but not space). It could make a good movie too.