Hollywood’s imagination drain is the problem, but here’s the cure – Philip K. Dick.
The late science fiction author whose work influenced “Blade Runner” and “Total Recall” continues to inspire screenwriters with “The Adjustment Bureau,” a new thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
“Bureau’s” sci-fi trappings can’t match other Dick adaptations, and you could drive a Hummer through some of the film’s gaping plot holes. But Dick’s fertile mind helps make “Bureau” a heady exploration of free will.
Damon stars as David Norris, a politician whose colorful past just cost him a senate seat in New York. He enters a men’s bathroom to mull over his concession speech where he meets Elise (Emily Blunt). She ducked into the bathroom after getting caught crashing a wedding.
“People still do that?” David asks her, smiling.
Sure, it’s yet another hackneyed “meet cute” moment, but the two flirt with abandon and kiss before going their separate ways.
That buss convinces David to go the full “Bulworth” during his subsequent speech, talking about the machinations behind politics down to picking the most poll approved tie color. The confession only makes him more popular, but David simply wants to see Elise again.
The folks at the Adjustment Bureau won’t let that happen. It seems David and Elise were never meant to be together, and their accidental pairing could affect history. It’s up to a team of serious, “Mad Men” era adjusters to get fate back on track, even if it means manipulating minds along the way.
“We’re the people who make sure everything goes according to plan,” says an Adjustment Bureau drone played by John Slattery.
Writer/director George Nolfi, who penned “The Bourne Ultimatum,” makes Damon into a credible political aspirant with some help via cameos by Jon Stewart, former DCN Chair Terry McCauliffe and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. It’s a nice touch that strangers keep recognizing David on the streets of New York, something other filmmakers likely wouldn’t have bothered including.
And yes, David is a Democrat, but politics don’t play much of a role here beyond talk of solar panels and cozy interviews on “The Daily Show.”
Early on, an Adjustment worker threatens David with being “expunged” – his brain getting wiped clean if he doesn’t do as they say. But the threat the bureau poses is never serious enough for a thriller like this. Terence Stamp plays the Bureau’s heaviest hitter, but even the erstwhile General Zod can’t bring enough menace to merit all that running during the film’s final reel.
Anthony Mackie provides the Bureau’s conscience as the worker assigned to breaking up David and Elise, but overall these Bureaucrats are often too ridiculous to fear. How tough can they be when the bulk of their power rests in their ’50s era hats?
Instead, we’re left rooting for David and Elise to outwit the Bureau goons and fall properly in love. Blunt is both plucky and unconventional, a fine romantic foil for a politician eager for something unexpected in his life.
“The Adjustment Bureau” may be a so-so sci-fi affair, but the heartstrings plucked along the way by Damon and Blunt pay tribute to Dick’s fanciful imaginings.
(Photo: Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are on the run from “The Adjustment Bureau.” Universal Pictures)
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hollywood’s continual mining of the work of Philip K. Dick isn’t the cure for their “imagination drain”, it’s an example of it. They’ve had a few hits with adaptations of his work (usually either greatly expanded, radically changed, or both), so they’ll keep on at it until they run out of source material or money – whichever happens first. I’m looking forward to the point where they start doing adaptations of his shopping lists: ‘He was A Man – A Man who wanted a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a quarter-pound of salami…’
By the way, how long does somebody have to be dead before they stop being “late”? I mean, we don’t speak of ‘the late George Washington’ do we? I think that after 29 years Philip K. Dick is probably just plain dead, but when did he stop being “late”? After two years, five years, ten years?
Perhaps I’m too jaded, but I see so many movies lacking in freshness that when I see one that feels different it catches my interest. I’d rather screenwriters turn to an author like Dick and his creative fiction than reboot an old TV show or reinvent something that didn’t need to be reinvented in the first place.
As for the “late” demarcation – great point. I used it here because it felt right. I sensed the avg. reader wasn’t sure if Dick was still among us or not, as opposed to a movie adaptation of, say, Hemingway’s work. But for my more learned readers, please let me know if there’s a hard and fast rule about using the “late” label.