Adjustment Bureau

Typically in sci-fi, if even one detail is inconsistent within the invented universe, the film’s credibility falls to bits. Luckily, The Adjustment Bureau is driven more by romance than by its often ridiculous details.

The story begins when a promising young congressman, David Norris (Matt Damon), loses the race for Senate and retreats to the men’s bathroom to practice his concession speech. There, he has a chance encounter with a charming and inspiring ballerina, Elsie Sellas (Emily Blunt), with whom he shares an electric kiss before she flees. From that moment forward, a swarm of men working for a higher power—whose reasoning even they don’t understand—traverse time and space to keep the two apart.

When Norris discovers these fedora-clad villains, seeing behind a curtain that he shouldn’t even know exists, he is told he can no longer see Elsie—their meeting was not part of the Plan. Norris finds the beautiful stranger intoxicating, though, and he simply can’t forget her. Richardson (John Slattery), Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) and the pair’s superior, Thompson (Terence Stamp), use magical notebooks to track Norris’ actions and crisscross through the city by means of enchanted doorways to stop the couple from reuniting. Although the details are silly—for example, you only have to don a hat, any hat, to access the Bureau’s door network—the audience will be so enveloped by the burning on-screen chemistry that they will forgive these hiccups, wanting David and Elsie to forgo their destinies and find their fairy-tale ending.

The Adjustment Bureau proposes a new twist on the classic “free will” vs. “fate” dilemma, humanizing the debate by examining the choice between happiness and potential for greatness through Damon and Blunt’s romance. Whether or not you buy into the sci-fi aspect of the film, it reminds you that sometimes the choice is worth the fight.

—Arielle Silverman