Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Adjustment Bureau


I have watched The Adjustment Bureau on its first day in Singapore in Tampines Golden Village cinema. The director is George Nolfi, the director of The Bourne Ultimatum and one of my favorite actors, Matt Damon is the lead character so there was no way to miss the movie.

The movie is loosely based on Philip K. Dick's science fiction short story "Adjustment Team" but do not expect a classic like Blade Runner (adapted from his Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). The trailer reminded me of The Dark City but this movie is very different and it is not actually "dark".

Spoiler alert!

Our charismatic politician David Norris (Matt Damon) meets The One, Elise (Emily Blunt), on the worst day of his career and they fall in love at first sight. But there are mysterious guys who will do whatever it takes to separate them and become more aggresive as their passion gets stronger. These guys look like the Observers in the TV Series "Fringe" (but they have hair this time) and we will get to know more about them and their reasons to keep David and Elise separated.



When I was a kid, our televisions were flooded with Brazilian and Mexican soap operas (which always had a man named Ramon either as a gardener, driver or a house keeper) where a man and woman wants each other more than everything but all the forces of the TV show tries hard to separate them. Here the separative force is more strong and transforms this already explored and boring theme into a good romance/thriller with a science fiction background. A gigantic bureaucracy, loosely religious beliefs and figures of Abrahamic religions, reluctantly controlling the fate of the mankind is depicted smoothly and well supports the love theme which is otherwise explored many times.

The chemistry between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt is very realistic and the movie achieve to deliver its message about love, fate, free will and the powers beyond our reach and controlling our lives.

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