The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau -A Head Space Oddity

Directed by George Nolfi

starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery

Matt Damon hits the streets of New York to take on an army of sharply dressed mind benders as he attempts to run for Senator and keep track of his one true love who he met in a mens room, on the night of his first election loss. This film wades into the murky waters of a concept movie, similar to Inception or the Matrix. It deals with ideas of freewill, fate, destiny and existence itself. With the Big Apple as the setting and the men in suits and dark fedoras playing out this bizarre game of a man losing himself to a organization he cannot name or understand, the film should have been cooler than Kafka on ice. It is however the most ram shackled, addled and confusing mess this reviewer has ever seen.

Just as Damon's David Norris struggles with his own identity, battling the possibilities of love and mediocrity, versus unbridled power and loneliness, so too does the film struggle to find out exactly what it is. It opens as a poorly lit political thriller, moves quickly into a poorly lit romance, then a poorly lit Hitchcockian mind trap and on and on it clumsily goes, drifting in and out of these and many other ill suited genres.

Even the appearance of immortals like Terrence Stamp and John Slatterly are powerless against the awfulness of this enterprise. It looks as if it were made by five different directors, none of whom are even aware that the others exist. The main idea behind the concept is absurd, lazy and wafer thin. It is based on a Philip K Dick's novel which was first published in 1954 and it shows it's age, in scene after ridiculous scene. Men with magic hats making portals out of ordinary doors, people being freeze framed and having their minds re-calibrated, Orwellian heavies that look like they stepped off the set of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). There are moments where the actors connect, where the good writing is delivered with a great speech and where the chemistry between Damon and Blunt actually sparkles but they are few and far between in this offering. You can see flashes of what the movie may have been, which only makes the majority of this sordid mess all the more unbearable.

The greatest crime however of this film is the music. Possibly the worst and most uneven score since Al Jolson put on the black face for the Jazz Singer. It meanders and turns without warning or reason from light romance to heavy thriller to sweeping grandiosity. It is, much like the film's other elements, utterly lost and at the cruel mercy of a complete lack of direction. With a different score, this film may actually have worked or at least been watchable to a degree.

Having just recently watched Damon in The Informant (2009) as well as revisiting Good Will Hunting (1997), this was a bitter disappointment. As I left the theatre, I found myself shaking my head and not laughing quite so much at the poster for Justin Beiber's new movie.