Matt Damon has put together a surprising string of box office failures over the past couple of years, and his new release The Adjustment Bureau looks like the wrong candidate to break the trend. Lacking inventiveness, intensity, or a coherent plot, The Adjustment Bureau is the first flat-out bad movie Damon has headlined in quite some time. While the film may draw in a decent opening weekend crowd due to its gimmicky premise and promises of action, poor word of mouth should make this another post-Bourne dud for Damon.
The picture, from screenwriter and first-time director George Nolfi, starts out slowly but promisingly, following David Norris (Damon) as he aggressively campaigns for a seat in the Senate. Although he appears the clear frontrunner, things quickly turn sour when a laughable excuse for a political scandal derails Norris’ campaign. The tame nature of this “scandal” is a lazy attempt to maintain David’s likeability throughout the remainder of the film. Its serious implications are entirely unrealistic in this day and age of major political screw-ups. After suffering a tough loss on Election Day, David bumps into Elise, played by a glossy-eyed Emily Blunt, and as quickly as he realizes she is the woman of his dreams, he loses her to hotel security. After a bizarre experience (possibly the best sequence in the film) where he discovers the behind-the-scenes workings of The Adjustment Bureau, David is threatened to never seek out Elise again. Their paths, he learns, are “not meant to cross.”
Now this is where the movie should take off. Instead, the film just seems to turn on cruise control all the way to its rushed and underdeveloped ending. The potentially fascinating world of The Adjustment Bureau, where a supernatural agency works day and night to keep everyone’s lives on the correct path, needs to be either fully explored or veiled in secrecy, and yet the filmmakers seem to have no interest in using it other than as a plot device. Nolfi also makes the grave error of giving its members awkward scenes that serve no purpose other than to vocalize their intentions. These goofy interactions give us little reason to care about them as characters, and their stilted mannerisms and dialogue only make them come off as hokey rather than threatening. The bureau never follows through with its threats either. Thus the viewer never senses that Damon’s character is in any real danger. These unnecessary scenes take away precious time from David and Elise’s relationship, and we’re left wondering why our two main characters love each other so much in the first place.
Clearly Nolfi was the weakest link in the group of five writers that tackled Damon’s action hit The Bourne Ultimatum. His solo work here is almost painful to sit through. Rules are made up as the film goes along, and because Nolfi has failed to suck viewers into this universe, they are easily exposed as cheap plot devices rather than integral aspects of the world these characters inhabit. For example, when one member of the Adjustment Bureau wishes to talk in secret with David, he meets him on a boat and offhandedly tells him (and the audience) that water “disrupts their signal.” The entire scene might as well be replaced with a slide that says “WATER WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER ON.”
For a movie that’s just over an hour and a half, The Adjustment Bureau feels incredibly long. After David first discovers The Adjustment Bureau, the story stalls. There are few twists, turns, or surprises as the film lunges toward its finale. Every character is exactly who they claim to be, and no one ever matures or develops as these supposedly incredible events occur around them. True, one could argue that recent sci-fi movies have become too long, too complicated, and too serious. But instead of feeling refreshing, The Adjustment Bureau just feels like no one could think of a better way to make things even remotely interesting.
The only two actors that make this film watchable are Damon and Mad Men’s John Slattery, who both turn in very solid performances. Damon is convincing as a young scrappy politician and even more effective in his quieter moments, easily making David the only empathetic character in the entire film. Slattery, who plays Agent Richardson, takes a poorly written two dimensional character and makes him pop on screen, which makes it frustrating when Nolfi decides to inexplicably leave him off-screen for almost the entirety of the second half of the film.
Quick warning to viewers, The Adjustment Bureau may have one of the weakest endings for a thriller/sci-fi flick in quite some time. Rarely have I seen a film cop out so mightily towards the end of what should have been a rousing conclusion. The entire slow build-up essentially led to nothing. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a parent making up a quick ending halfway through their child’s favorite book because they don’t have the energy to read the whole thing. Judging by the laughter/heavy sighs in my theater, I don’t think I was the only one who felt that way. Keep your destiny on the right path and skip this one, and pray for Matt Damon’s own cinematic destiny while you’re at it.