If Our Fates Are Predetermined.................................

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 2011)

Matt Damon, who looks and sounds in this film like another of the Kennedy clan as befitting his Boston background, stars in The Adjustment Bureau as a would be US Senator from New York State. He's just lost a race, but is looking eagerly for a comeback. And he's met whom he considers his soul-mate, promising young ballerina Emily Blunt. So what is wrong with this picture?
If you are of religious bent and are a conspiratorial theorist than you've waited all your life for a film like The Adjustment Bureau. The Christian Faith's central tenet is that the broad march of human history is predetermined and it would follow that those of us who are leaders of some kind also have a predetermined path to follow. The Adjustment Bureau is a group of supernatural beings who move and work among us, guiding us in their own way to those paths.
One of the Adjustment Bureau beings, Anthony Mackie, missed a cue and Damon and Blunt meet again and develop an attraction. This is not part of the master plan for the human race so for whatever reason we've got to keep them apart.
The film is an interesting and unique concept that doesn't quite know the conclusions it wants you to reach. Damon and Blunt are sincere and more than capable as the young lovers who someone upstairs is not willing to see together. Damon's problem is more unique, he actually stumbled upon the existence of this Adjustment Bureau and he gets more set in his ways to have Blunt come what may.
Where is God in all this? According to the film he's not in a separate and faraway place called heaven, but he's right here among us in the trenches of our everyday lives. If the message is a bit muddled, The Adjustment Bureau is still entertaining and interesting.