THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU: please adjust your disbelief to avoid disapppointment

The first 20 minutes or so of THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU will lull fans of 'Inception' into believing they're in for a similar - if easier to understand - treat. Based on the short story by Philip K Dick, BUREAU also plays with perceptions of reality and our ability to control our own destiny. But then first-time director George Nolfi goes and spoils it all by showing us the man behind the curtain who's making all the magic happen.

On its own that needn't be disastrous - after all 'The Wizard of Oz' did just that and it's regarded as a classic - but Nolfi compounds the mistake by making the man simultaneously omnipotent and fatally flawed, and while it's possible for both qualities to co-exist, in this case the latter undermines the premise of the former. The titular Adjustment Bureau is an organisation run by an army of bureaucrats who dress like 1960s Madison Avenue advertising executives and operate like the J.Edgar Hoover era FBI. It's members are tasked with ensuring the life of every human being follows the pre-ordained path set down in a notebook by an unseen power who's higher than the US President and may or may not be god-like (his/her actual identity is kept deliberately vague to avoid offending believing or alienating non-believers).
Matt Damon, as US Senate candidate David Norris, first encounters these men in grey when a chance encounter with the beautiful Elise (Emily Blunt) causes him to deviate from the routine laid out for him. It's at this point that the coherence of the story starts to fall apart. The Bureau is all knowing and all powerful yet the only tool it has to keep Norris in line is to threaten him with a personality make-over if he tells anyone about them (of course, they wouldn't have had to threaten him at all if they'd just knocked him out rather than engage him in a lengthy conversation during which they describe their work in detail to him), To erase his memory and personality in order to keep him quiet would be an enormous deviation from his pre-assigned destiny (remember, they're trying to stop him from deviating from this plan) and the bureau has a particular interest in keeping Norris on track because really big things are planned for his future (it'll take you about 2 minutes to figure out what they are). Norris however wants what he wants and that's Elise, creating the story's dramatic tension as he battles to assert his free will against forces determined and sort-of powerful enough to stop him.

The fight which ensues strongly suggests that love trumps pre-ordained destiny and this is the biggest problem I have with the story. I find it hard  to believe that the Bureau has not had to deal with this particular form of rebellion before at some point in the history of the world (and senior Bureau man Terence Stamp makes it clear they've been around for centuries doing this job). Surely by 2011 they'd have come up with a solution to counter the disruptive possibilities of one man's libido.
Damon turns in his usual solid performance, but even his admittedly impressive ability to run countless New York city blocks at full pelt without breaking a sweat is not enough to gloss over the gaping cracks in the story. The only way to avoid repeating the phrase "yeah but..." over and over again while watching THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is to not simply suspend your disbelief but send it off an all expenses paid three week Caribbean cruise. And if you've got any sense you'll go with it. You'll have more fun than watching this.