The Adjustment Bureau

Maaatt Daaamon! (And Emily Blunt)

One of the most remark­able things about Matt Damon’s career, is that it’s still pos­si­ble to take him some­what seri­ously after he showed up as a retarded fig­ure of fun in Team Amer­ica: World Police, capa­ble only of utter­ing his own name.

He’s not com­pletely recov­ered. Dur­ing any of his sub­se­quent movies, the words, “Maaatt Daaa­mon” still momen­tar­ily sur­face in the back of my mind, dis­tract­ing me from his usual top drawer efforts to act his lit­tle socks off.

The dis­trac­tion feels more pro­nounced in The Adjust­ment Bureau as he’s play­ing a sen­a­tor, which is the sort of role you’d expect to see George Clooney play­ing with the more states­man like air that comes with age.

But Damon just about pulls it off. He’s believ­able, even if the film itself seems to express some doubts early on.

Maaatt Daaa­mon!

It all starts to go a bit wrong for Damon when he bumps into an intel­li­gent, slightly filthy, bal­let dancer in a men’s toi­let. I’ve lost count of the num­ber of the times that’s hap­pened to me. Seem­ingly putting to one side that she might be the hon­ey­trap in some dia­bol­i­cal con­spir­acy, he snogs her face off. She’s Emily Blunt, you see. Who can blame him?

Mys­te­ri­ous men in hats are watch­ing though. No, it’s not some Ams­ter­dam peep show, but other worldly, shad­owy fig­ures that seem­ingly con­trol all our fates. Except they’re not really shad­owy. They’re pretty bloody obvi­ous to spot, swan­ning around in big groups, kit­ted out in match­ing grey suits, and fedo­ras that nobody wears any more.

Matt also had to con­tend with a zom­bie apocalypse!

They’re the sci­ence fic­tion dis­guise for the true genre that The Adjust­ment Bureau belongs to. A roman­tic drama, no less.

I admit, at first, to feel­ing a bit conned by this. I love a bit of sci­ence fic­tion, but usu­ally avoid roman­tic dra­mas by jump­ing through the near­est win­dow. And if there’s no win­dow, I try to numb the pain by chew­ing the skin off my knuckles.

What passes for big, roman­tic ges­tures in the movie world, often take on a more sin­is­ter tone. Blunt makes gooey eyes at Matt Damon, where per­haps she might think about tele­phon­ing the police if the same thing hap­pened in the real world.

That they have a fairly pleas­ant, sparky chem­istry for the rest of the movie goes some way to coun­ter­act­ing any slight creepi­ness that might intrude. And when that isn’t enough, there’s at least a bit of sci-fi head fuck­ery, and a lean, sharply edited chase or two to pass the time.

With a film that is as much roman­tic drama as it is sci­ence fic­tion, there’s a dan­ger that it can fall between two stools, and not sat­isfy fans of either genre. But The Adjust­ment Bureau gets it just about right. Both sets of fans will get some­thing out of it, and find it enjoy­able, if a lit­tle on the light­weight side.

Of course, the direc­tor George Nolfi would think dif­fer­ent, say­ing that the “inten­tion of this film is to raise questions.”

And ques­tions there are. Who are the Adjust­ment Bureau? Where do they come from? Are they angels? Some­thing else entirely? Who does their tai­lor­ing? And, where can I get me one of those magic hats?

Maaatt Daaa­mon!