Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, two of the more appealing actors in movies, are set dashing through the surprising blandness of “The Adjustment Bureau,” a sort of adventure-romance with a sci-fi mechanism.
The mechanism comes from the mind of “Minority Report” genius Philip K. Dick, who wrote the
short story from which the film is loosely adapted. But the movie opens without any hint of a science fiction undertone; the world appears to be quite normal.
Damon plays a Senate candidate, who bumps into a ballet dancer (that’s Blunt) he’d met years before. They have a nice conversation. He’d really like to get to know her. But it’s not meant to be, not in a New Age-y way, but literally.
Because when the surface of life is peeled back, it turns out that an “adjustment bureau” is busy controlling all of our movements. And for reasons we won’t completely learn until later in the movie, Damon and Blunt were not supposed to bump into each other just now.
The adjustment agent (Anthony Mackie, from “The Hurt Locker”) following Damon missed a cue. So his boss (“Mad Men” rascal John Slattery) must reveal their operation to the young politician, with the stern warning that if Damon ever spills the beans about it, he’ll have his mind erased.
Even worse, the bureau will have to call in the big boss, played by Terence Stamp. Since this is even worse than getting a call from an IRS auditor, the cheerful underlings of the adjustment bureau would really rather not have to do that.
The film, written and directed by “Bourne Ultimatum” scribe George Nolfi, has a humorous thread, best expressed by Slattery’s glib one-liners (and by the Eisenhower-era hats worn by the agents). This provides some amusing moments, but the humor works against the film’s paranoid theme.
The romance comes across better than the alternate world we’re introduced to. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have a charming interplay as they go through their many stages of interrupted courtship.
You might find yourself wishing they weren’t stuck in the gears of a thriller, which — for all its potential to be a brainy “Inception”-shaped mind-bender — still comes down to two people running across the streets of Manhattan trying to get away from the bad guys.
In this case, those streets will occasionally open onto a portal that will instantly transport the two fleeing lovers to the Statue of Liberty or Yankee Stadium. All right, that’s a pretty good variation.
But “The Adjustment Bureau” still misses the beat. Given their chemistry together, you’d like to follow Damon and Blunt into any door they go through, just not the one marked “The Adjustment Bureau.”
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