UK RELEASE DATE - 4th March 2011.

Director George Nolfi doesn’t know Dick. As in Philip K. that is, whose 1954 short story ‘Adjustment Team’ is the basis for this crass and lazy venture into lame sci-fi romance. Coming on weak like a bad episode of ‘The Avengers’, practically the only shred of true Dick in this misbegotten and startlingly pedestrian Big Brother farrago is the iconic and eccentric writer’s famed juxtaposition of two levels of reality.

Now that lack of content didn’t stop BLADE RUNNER or MINORITY REPORT from working out well. Unfortunately Nolfi (writer of OCEAN’S 12, co-writer of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM) ends up with something more in the low-budget SCREAMERS and IMPOSTOR range despite having such A-List stars as Matt Damon and Emily Blunt aboard his lack-lustre vehicle. The basic premise is this: are we in charge of our lives, or are decisions made for us long before we consider them?  The answer is basically no as there’s this group of Fate agents (angels it is suggested at one point, working for a ‘Chairman of the Board’) who predetermine everything so humanity doesn’t royally screw up the future. Glitches sometimes occur of course and one of them concerns charismatic politician David Norris (Damon) who won’t become US president if he continues dating gorgeous contemporary ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Blunt). Nor will she achieve world celebrity status if they ever kiss. So every attempt is made by a laughable bunch of sinister strangers (led by MAD MEN’s John Slattery) to stop their affair in its tracks, and when that mysteriously fails, head man Thompson (an unsteady Terence Stamp) is called in to resolve the Norris problem once and for all. And how do they do this? By consulting ever-shifting life charts, never reading them correctly and moving fast between Manhattan locations by opening doorways powered by magic hats. Cliché as the romantic thread is, it really is the only strand that works in this by-the-numbers paranoid fantasy. Thank Damon and Blunt for making that work as daft as their dialogue often is.

Okay the first time the veil is lifted and you see the Adjustment Bureau recalibrating Norris’ motionless office workers, you get interested and keep thinking it’s all building up to something truly spectacular. No such luck. It remains consistently low energy throughout, with little suspense generated, fewer thrills, limited style and no visual effects work of note whatsoever only to end with a dull thud atop a skyscraper. ‘BOURNE meets INCEPTION’ my arse! 

Alan Jones.

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