# The Adjustment Bureau (2011)



## Sargeant_Fox (Feb 12, 2011)

YouTube - 'The Adjustment Bureau' Trailer HD

Matt Damon. Emily Blunt. Together in a movie based on a short-story by PKD, with vibes of *Dark City, *which is one of my favourite sci-fi movies ever! Also Terrence Stamp as one of the antagonists.

I'm totally anxious about this movie!


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## aurica (Feb 24, 2011)

The adjustment bureau is seems to be a good movie as i had watch the trailer of this movie.


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## Rodders (Feb 24, 2011)

Yes, i quite like the look of this.


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## Connavar (Feb 25, 2011)

Its way too bright,too romantic to be the PKD story but i like Matt Damon and its not like they care for PKD other than using his name....


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## clovis-man (Feb 25, 2011)

Looks interesting, but what's with the hats?

I wouldn't worry, Conn. The PKD imprimatur doesn't really mean that much to most movie-goers. And like you say, there is likely to be little resemblance to anything he really wrote anyway.


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## Connavar (Feb 25, 2011)

clovis-man said:


> Looks interesting, but what's with the hats?
> 
> I wouldn't worry, Conn. The PKD imprimatur doesn't really mean that much to most movie-goers. And like you say, there is likely to be little resemblance to anything he really wrote anyway.



The hats is the story is from the 50s when he was young,writing short stories.

PKD has some name recogniation with the movie goers thanks Blade Runner,Minrioriy Report.  Not that they are important for hollywood bosses who like to use PKD short stories because they are more thrilling,less weird than his novels.


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## clovis-man (Feb 25, 2011)

Connavar said:


> The hats is the story is from the 50s when he was young,writing short stories.


 
I grew up in the fifties and I didn't wear a fedora. I would consider it a contrivance to help the audience know who is who. Sort of like the Raybans in *The Matrix*. I would contend that a good script and a good director would render such gimmicks unnecessary. But I'm funny that way.


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## williamjm (Mar 7, 2011)

I saw it today. It was a reasonably good film, but nothing special and I think they struggled to give it a suitably exciting ending. 



> Looks interesting, but what's with the hats?



The adjusters can teleport through doors, but only if they're wearing their special hats. I think I went along with this while the movie was on, but in retrospect it is a rather silly plot device.


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## Connavar (Mar 7, 2011)

clovis-man said:


> I grew up in the fifties and I didn't wear a fedora. I would consider it a contrivance to help the audience know who is who. Sort of like the Raybans in *The Matrix*. I would contend that a good script and a good director would render such gimmicks unnecessary. But I'm funny that way.



Frankly im a bit excited for the film because the hat thing williamj explained sound funny. 

Yeah of course about the fedora hats its Hollywood idea of the 50s because there were no hats in the PKD short story.  PKD early stories is from mid-late 50s.

Thats a bit after Bogart,Sterling Hayden days of 40s-50s with the cool hats.


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## PTeppic (Mar 7, 2011)

williamjm said:


> The adjusters can teleport through doors, but only if they're wearing their special hats. I think I went along with this while the movie was on, but in retrospect it is a rather silly plot device.



I guess it's a way of adding sense to "why can't ordinary people just go through the doors", or possibly a way of metaphoricising halos?

Incidentally, whilst I found it clever and logical, there were many sections when it seemed to drag a little. In contrast, I double-headed it with "Unknown", which was much more consistently "action".


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## Luc Valentine (Mar 9, 2011)

I've heard the criticism about dragging, some say it is uneven or choppy. Myself, I think that's the director's choice to add balanced pacing to the film.


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## clovis-man (Mar 9, 2011)

williamjm said:


> The adjusters can teleport through doors, but only if they're wearing their special hats. I think I went along with this while the movie was on, but in retrospect it is a rather silly plot device.


 
Well, dang it. That does it. Now I HAVE to see it!!


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## Dave (Mar 9, 2011)

Who did the film score? No Hats Beyond This Point (Men Without Hats)


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## Daisy-Boo (Mar 11, 2011)

clovis-man said:


> Well, dang it. That does it. Now I HAVE to see it!!


 
Can I just say? I love the word _dang_. Whenever I see that word I think of The Far Side and that always makes me smile.


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## Dave (Jun 15, 2012)

Well, I eventually got around to watching this. 



williamjm said:


> The adjusters can teleport through doors, but only if they're wearing their special hats. I think I went along with this while the movie was on, but in retrospect it is a rather silly plot device.


Not to mention the problem of how Elise was able to go through the doors with no hat!! (Which could have actually been very easily solved if they had just taken the hat from the man Matt Damon knocked out inside the toilet.) 

Actually, the hats didn't have to be Fedoras. Police Helmets worked. He was told to watch out for anyone in a hat, or even a baseball cap.

It did start off very slow, and I also noticed the quick, quick, slow, which I agree kind of jarred; not sure I would call it "The Director's balanced pacing."

I forgot it was "based" on a PKD story, but I found it hopelessly romantically sloppy (which PKD never was.)

The Mind Readjustment was a little more sinister though; changing people's thought patterns. That seemed out of place in such a enormous piece of cheese.



williamjm said:


> I think they struggled to give it a suitably exciting ending.


That is quite interesting because Wikipedia says:


> The final scene (on the rooftop of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center ("Top of the Rock") was filmed four months after the rest of the film had completed shooting and has a different ending than the original.



It sounds like your intuition was good.

Wikipedia also says:


> Some reviewers identified Abrahamic theological implications


Only _Some_? Did the others not watch the same film?

Destiny versus Free Will. Basically, if I have this right, God has a written plan for all of us and Angels make sure we stick to the plan. However, God is flighty and mercurial and keeps changing his plan on a whim (at least 12 times in this case, they said) and all this causes huge problems for his Angels to keep track. However, he still believes in true love and that wins out in the end. Despite being a very busy person, God quickly writes yet another new plan, begging the question of why we had all this running around, and the on-off Weddings anyway. And those Angels need a Union.

*Dark City* and *The Matrix* have already been mentioned. The publicity for the film says it is a cross between *Bourne* and *Inception*. I'd say it was more of a mash-up of *Jumper* with *The Butterfly Effect.*

The _Doors_ (not Jim Morrison's "The Doors") were quite a good concept though, and that idea at least saved the film for me.


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## Anthony G Williams (Nov 23, 2012)

*The Adjustment Bureau* is yet another movie based on a story (_Adjustment Team_) by Philip K Dick, who must surely not just hold the record for the number of his stories to have inspired films; his score is probably greater than that of all other SF writers put together. 

This starts as an apparently routine story about US Congressman David Norris (Matt Damon), running for office in the Senate, who briefly meets Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt) a dancer to whom he is instantly attracted. By chance, he meets her again some months later and discovers that his feelings have strengthened and are reciprocated by Elise. 

At this point, the story becomes anything but routine: for Norris clashes with a mysterious otherworldy organisation called The Adjustment Bureau, which has immense and inexplicable power. The Bureau is set on keeping Norris and Elise apart, for reasons of its own, and what follows is an extended tussle as Norris battles against the will of the Bureau to find and keep Elise, gradually discovering more about his supernatural adversaries as the plot progresses.

This is an unusually low-key film by SF standards - no car chases or explosions, and the Bureau super-agents appear as ordinary businessmen with a peculiar agenda and a neat trick with doorways. Damon plays his usual competent-but-troubled man part (as in the *Bourne* trilogy) while Blunt, who seems to be appearing in a lot of films I watch, is excellent. This is a rather strange blend of fantasy, romance, and political thriller which I suspect won't be to everyone's taste, but it worked for me. 

(An extract from my SFF blog: http://sciencefictionfantasy.blogspot.co.uk/)


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## megamaniac (Nov 24, 2012)

I watched it on DVD.  I thought it was too silly.  Lots such movies have come out lately, so it's only ok.  I give it 2 1/2 stars.


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## Oct125 (Dec 4, 2012)

I thought this movie was entertaining but not in the same category as Dark City, one of my favorites.


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## MontyCircus (Jan 24, 2013)

Didn't work for me either.  @@ out of @@@@@.


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