MOVIE REVIEW: “The Adjustment Bureau” stars Matt Damon (The Bourne Identity, Interstellar), Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, The Devil Wears Prada), Anthony Mackie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Hurt Locker), Michael Kelly (Now You See Me, Chronicle), John Slattery (Mad Men [TV series], Iron Man 2), and Terence Stamp (Yes Man, Valkyrie). It is directed by George Nolfi (Birth of the Dragon, Allegiance [TV series]). David Norris (Damon) is a people-pleasing politician who has been trying to get the position of Senator for a while now. Although he tried as hard as he could, he couldn’t seal the position, losing to his Republican opponent. However, on the night he lost, everything changed for him when he met a ballet dancer named Elise (Blunt). He instantly fell in love with her and Elise felt the same way. When David thought he finally found someone he could spend his life with, fate caught up with him….in the form of men in suits. These men belong to an agency called the Adjustment Bureau, where they keep people on their path to their destiny, adjusting them back on track if they go off course. They capture David and tell him that he cannot see Elise anymore because it isn’t what his future is supposed to hold. David doesn’t want to believe them and tries to create his own destiny with Elise, but it will be hard with the Adjustment Bureau watching his every move.

For some reason, Philip K. Dick, writer of Minority Report and Total Recall, loves the idea of fate. Now, he didn’t write the movies’ screenplays, but he wrote the stories that made them possible. Fate is an interesting topic to write on and it is an argument that I have seen on some TV shows and movies. The argument is that if people can make their own fate, or do they follow along a path to a destiny and they have no way of controlling it. When it comes to my opinion, I go with what Forrest Gump said at the end of the movie “Forrest Gump”:  “I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.” With that said, onto my thoughts of the film! I have never seen a trailer for this movie, with the only indication of what the plot was before watching it lying on the back of the Blu-ray box I received as a gift. They tackled the idea of fate in a good fashion for this movie. It came with a lesson that I respected and enjoyed to observe. The first thirty or so minutes of the film takes its time setting up the characters, but I love it nonetheless because my favorite part of any story is its characters. I will say that it does take a while longer to get to the thrill than expected. Once the Adjustment Bureau starts hunting David the first time it picks up speed and gets a lot more interesting. One thing that came into my head a lot was how the workers in the Adjustment Bureau reminded me of the Observers from the TV series “Fringe”. It was hard to focus on those characters and not think of the Observers, but I won’t mark the movie for it. When it comes to acting, it is fantastic. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have a great chemistry on-screen that I enjoyed watching. You can really feel for them in terms of how much they like each other. Anthony Mackie was also really good in this, having seen him in quite a bit of movies recently. I think out of all the actors in this film, my favorite has to be Terence Stamp as Thompson. When he first arrived in the film, it was the best scene (the dialogue scene). From there, he became a more central character which I thought was a great move. The action scenes were well-done and the special effects were crazy good. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that what the people at the Adjustment Bureau can do comes with great special effects that are fun to watch. Now time for the cons. All of the cons that come to mind have to do with the ending of this film. The first one is how there are things that don’t make sense in terms of the characters choices. There are two instances where this happens, but I won’t spoil any of them. I will say that it just makes you think and they try to cover it up with the whole love theme, and although I talked about chemistry between the characters before, the way the movie set up David and Elise makes you confused of how easy they are to just fall back into each others arms. And that, for some reason, affects the other characters to, which comes to my last con: The ending felt clichéd. It was a happy ending and it ended how I thought it would, just not the way in execution terms. I thought there would be a big reason as to how they could possibly get out of their situation, but the story basically threw it to some mushy reason that people who love romance would love, but people who want realism and reason would sigh at. Overall, I didn’t expect this movie to be as big of a romance as I thought it would be, but it was good. I enjoyed the idea and the chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt made it great to watch their characters and how they felt for each other. I would recommend anyone to check this movie out. FINAL SCORE: 90%= Juicy Popcorn

Here is the trailer: