Dicking Around

The Adjustment Bureau is another Philip K. Dick movie adaptations. It's not a blockbuster like Bladerunner or Total Recall. It's kind of a small picture, like Paycheck.

Matt Damon is a young New York politician, whose senatorial bid has just been crushed by the publication of a youthful indiscretion. He meets the girl of his dreams, Emily Blunt, in the men's room of a hotel before his concession speech, then on the bus the next day. So, he loses the senatorship, but gains a cute British girlfriend. He's OK with that, until the Men with Hats show up.

Not the alt-disco group Men without Hats, but the Adjustment Bureau, a group of long-lived beings with mysterious powers tasked with adjusting reality to make destiny come out right. Their powers are mainly:

• Books with sketches that update automatically and show what is going to happen, similar Harry Potter's Marauder's Map
• The ability to go through doors and come out almost anywhere
• To wear hats without irony

They let him know that he is destined to be a great senator, but not to ever see Blunt again. Care to guess whether he accepts this, or decides to fight?

Good things about this movie:

• Blunt plays a ballet dancer, and they get a very good dancer to double her. Her dancing really is inspiring, and you can see how Damon would be touched
• The Men with Hats are suitably drab and anonymous, except:
• African-American agent Harry, played by Anthony Mackie in a cool stingy-brim
• "The Hammer", a high-level agent played by Terence Stamp
• New York - this is another New-York-Looks-Wonderful movie. The city may be the best character in the film

Bad things? Well, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It is not Damon's best acting job. I personally would have liked a bit more action. But all in all, I liked it. It was fun, sweet, easy on the eyes and no deeper than it needed to be.

Extra credit, compare and contrast w/ Paycheck: Damon/Affleck, free-will/determinism, love/fate, etc.