Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER Is Kind Of A Big Deal

Opening tomorrow at a multiplex near us all:

OPPENHEIMER (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2023)

While there is visual splendor aplenty in this epic biopic of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, played perfectly by a rail thin Cillian Murphy, the bulk of it concerns the 1954 security hearing, in which the scientist was grilled by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) over his communist leanings. But the good news is all that talk, largely in stark, but pleasingly sharp black and white, is just as compelling as the sequences involving the Manhattan Project, especially the recreation of the Trinity test, the first nuclear weapon detonation, in New Mexico.

 

Simply put, Nolan’s 12th film, and second to be based on real events after DUNKIRK, is a masterwork, a rich powerful portrait that somehow makes science exciting, and justifies every second of its three-hour running time. It doesn’t matter that a lot of its dialogue, that has our hero brainstorming with his colleagues, will go over the heads of many movie-goers because the urgency and flow of the film, aided by composer Ludwig Göransson’s striking score will still hold audiences in its grasp. 

Told largely in flashbacks that are conjured by the panel hearing, the film illustrates how during World War II, Oppenheimer was appointed scientific director of the top-secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos by General Leslie Groves (a great, gruff Matt Damon) as part of the arms race against the Nazi regime. After the war, and the devastating bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, a guilt-ridden Oppenheimer went against the thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb), and campaigned for international control of these weapons.

One of the key figures in this story is AEC Chairman, Lewis Strauss, who suspected that the scientist was a Soviet spy, and was among those behind the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Strauss is portrayed, in heavy aging make-up, by Robert Downey Jr. in a career best performance. 

The actor shakes off his Marvel armor to deliver an impassioned, and at times desperate performance that is sure to be noticed by the Academy. At the film’s UK premiere, Downey Jr. said that, “This is the best film I’ve ever been in,” and I highly agree.

 

The rest of the film’s cast is as impressive as the effects, which Nolan claims contain no CGI, including an emotional Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s communist wife Katherine (“Kitty”), a long-suffering alcoholic, who was such because of her husband’s affair with psychiatrist, and another communist, Jean Tatlock, who is played by Florence Pugh initially as a sexy shrink (not that I’m complaining). 

 

Well placed in the roles of celebrated scientist colleagues are Kenneth Branaugh (in his third film with Nolan) as Danish physicist Niels Bohr, Josh Harnett as nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence, and David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, another Noble Prize-winning physicist, who has a stirring scene that enhances the film’s conscience.

 

In less lofty, yet still crucial, parts are Casey Affleck as snooping intelligence officer Boris Pash, and Rami Malek as David Hill, an experimental physicist, who doesn’t make much of an impression at first, but is vital by the end.

 

But it’s the centerpiece of OPPENHEIMER, The Trinity Test sequence, that might be the film’s biggest star. Director of Photography, and frequent Nolan collaborator, Hoyte Van Hoytema’s incredible IMAX cinematography gives us the world’s first-ever successful atomic bomb detonation in all of its scary glory, and it’s as stunning as it is profoundly unsettling.

 

In his telling of the story of the man credited as “the Father of the Atomic Bomb,” Nolan working from the 2005 bio American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, employs Oliver Stone-style cutting, and ominous framing to take us into Oppenheimer’s politically paranoid world, while switching back and forth from crisp color to start black and white throughout (so much you forget about it).

All of these strong elements – its narrative arc via its layered, engaging screenplay; its excellent cast headed by a dead-on, invested Murphy whose towering, tortured close-ups are really cool looking in IMAX; its practical effects adding up to modern movie magic in our current CGI oversaturated superhero era; Göransson’s tension-filled soundtrack (the only negative there is that it overwhelms the dialogue at times); and its emotional sense of both fear and amazement that science could cause the end of the world – all combine to make the first great movie of 2023, and an absolute must see on the biggest screen you can find.

 

I first questioned why Universal would release OPPENHEIMER in the middle of the summer, going up against BARBIE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, and INDIANA JONES, when it seems more like a better fit for the prestige Oscar season in December, but with all its explosive power it more than deserves a place among those blockbusters (or flopbusters), and I’m betting it be far from forgotten at the end of the year.

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The Sequel To A QUIET PLACE Is All Over The Place

 A QUIET PLACE PART II

(Dir. John Krasinski, 2021)

This was the first film I’ve seen on the big screen since March 2020, which is when it was originally scheduled to be released. Of course, you know why it was delayed, and why I went so long avoiding movie theaters. Now that things are getting somewhat back to normal, I caught up with John Krazinski’s sequel to his 2018 sleeper hit, A QUIET PLACE. I had enjoyed the first film, which depicts a family headed by the real life married couple Krasinski and Emily Blunt as Lee and Evelyn Abott trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world where tall, lanky blind aliens with multiple rows of sharp teeth will kill them if they make even the slightest sounds.

Although Krasinski’s character, Lee Abbott, was killed in the original, he appears here in a flashback opening which goes back to the first day of the alien attack. The scary creatures violently interrupt a little league game in an unspecified small town (somewhere in upstate New York), and it’s a thrilling sequence that I wish the movie stayed with longer. 

Instead we flash forward to Day 474, 385 days since the events of Part I, and we find Blunt’s Evelyn and her kids, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who’s deaf, and Marcus (Noah Jupe), who’s main trait is that he’s very nervous, living on the same farm, but not for long as the Halpert, sorry, Abbott family sets on a supply run across dangerous, devastated terrain. Oh, yeah, there’s the baby that Evelyn had in the previous installment, but he mostly naps in a soundproof wooden crate, or sucks on an oxygen canister.

Presumably because writer/director Krasinski thought they needed a moody male presence since the Dad is gone, Cillian Murphy pops up as Emmett an old friend of the family. Murphy’s character is a little reminiscent of his role in DUNKIRK, as he’s also a traumatized solider.

Much of the movie is set at a compound, a former Steel Mill, where Emmett lives in an air-tight bunker. Some of these scenes drag, but there are enough jolts, and shocks to keep one engaged. The last third concerns Emmett and Regan finding themselves at an island colony of survivors who act as if things are getting back to normal. The colony’s leader, Djimon Hounsou credited as “Man on the Island,” brings the promise of a weighty note to the narrative, but he doesn’t last long enough for his part to have much impact.

The finale, of course, is the family/monster showdown, and there’s a clever element to how the humans attempt to take down their slimey tormenters (I won’t Spoil it). However, I liked PART II a lot less than PART I. It didn’t feel as grounded or as emotionally gripping, and a lot of its tries to mirror the beats and scares of the original I could really see coming. It’s fitting that the film skips from one location to another, as it often feels like it’s all over the place. Where is a quiet place anyway? Is it the farm from PART I and part of PART II? Is it at the top of one of those silos? Or is it somewhere inside of us all?

A QUIET PLACE PART II is a fair follow-up that will likely be most appreciated by fans of the first one. It does have the highlight of the performance by Simmonds, who could very be seen as the film’s lead protagonist. Blunt puts in a solid, intense turn too, as does Murphy, but Simmonds steals this sequel fair and square.

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John Krasinski’s A QUIET PLACE Is Scary Good

Now playing at a multiplex near me:

A QUIET PLACE (Dir. John Krasinski, 2018) 

Since the hit NBC comedy, The Office, ended its run in 2013, John Krasinski has been trying to shed the skin of everyman Jim Halpert, who he played for nine seasons; 188 episodes.

To meet that end, Krasinzki played parts in Cameron Crowe’s infamous bomb, ALOHA; Michael Bay’s lowest grossing movie to date, 13 HOURS; did some low-key voice work in fairly forgotten animated films (THE PROPHET, ANIMAL CRACKERS), and he directed and starred in the 2016 comedy drama THE HOLLARS.

Much like his directorial debut, 2009’s BRIEF INTERVIEWS WITH HIDEOUS MEN, THE HOLLARS got mixed reviews, and didn’t make much of a splash, but now with his third film, A QUIET PLACE, Krasinski has made a major leap out of the shadow of Jim.

Krasinski, who co-wrote the screenplay with Bryan Woods, and Scott Beck, stars as husband and father, Lee Abbott, though we never hear that name out loud as he and his family, including his wife Evelyn (played by real-life wife Emily Blunt, and their deaf daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), and their sons, Marcus (Noah Jupe), and Beau (Cade Woodward), have to be completely quiet or else they’ll be attacked and eaten by demons.

You see, it’s yet another post apocalyptic landscape with, you know the drill: shots of an abandoned town with walls covered with missing persons flyers, the ransacked shelves of department stores, and newspaper headlines like “NYC on Lockdown” interspersed into the set-up. Another headline, “Stay Silent, Stay Alive,” lays out the Abbott family’s lifestyle as we see them communicate in sign language as they quietly make their way and back on a trip into town to get supplies during the film’s prologue.

The Abbotts live on a large farm, with corn fields, and multiple silos, and have taken precautions like stringing lights throughout the property which can be switched from yellow to red to warn the others of danger, and having fireworks on hand so that they can distract the monsters with loud noises when needed. And with Blunt’s very pregnant Evelyn about to give birth, lemme tell ya, they are needed!

We never learn where these blood thirsty creatures came from, or any other info about how large parts of the population were annihilated by them, we just get the Abbott’s tale of survival with the dad’s attempts to make contact with any other survivors via his shortwave radio bringing little hope, likewise his efforts to fix his daughter’s hearing aids (“it never works!” signs Regan).

With a cast of only six people (there’s an old man played by Leon Russom that they run into in the woods), precious little dialogue *, and a fair yet sparring amount of CGI for the demons, Krasinski has made a stirring, nerve-racking, and tensely effective thriller that never lags. It’s a confident piece of construction in its pacing, and with its edgy emotional pull it feel like you’re right there with these characters right up until its satisfying ending.

Krasinski gets a lot out of this simple but powerful premise by bringing a lot of heart to it. You can feel the warmth between he and Blunt, like when they share a moment listening to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” through shared earbuds, and in how they work together to get their newborn baby to safely. Blunt, by the way, has the movie’s most terrifying scene, involving having to give birth in complete silence in a bathtub by herself as creatures crawl through the house around her.

The kids’ performances deliver too – Simmonds is strong as the determined oldest sibling who feels unloved by her father, while Jupe is “on” as the very scared younger brother.

Marco Beltrami’s subtle score never intrudes on one of the film's other big stars - its sound design which successfully made me feel every aural instance. This is a movie that anyone who talks during should be immediately escorted out - its spare use of sound will reward its audiences’ complete silence.

A QUIET PLACE is quite an exciting surprise from Krasinski. It goes to show like Jordan Peele before him with GET OUT, these actor/director/writers can carve a new niche for themselves in with low budget yet high concept horror productions that can come in on an off season and make a killing. Of course, it also helps greatly that Krasinski, like Peele before him, has made a movie that’s scary good.

*By going to a nearby river and waterfall, the father and son get to briefly talk safely, and there’s a soundproof room they’ve constructed for the new baby. Of course, these elements have made some critics ask “why don’t they just live by the river, or in the soundproof room then?”

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A Drunk Emily Blunt Is THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, A Poor Man’s GONE GIRL

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

(Dir. Tate Taylor, 2016)

The set-up for this thriller based on Paula Hawkins’ 2012 British bestselling novel is sublimely simple. A young woman named Rachel, played by Emily Blunt, daydreams about the seemingly perfect life of a couple she’s never met that she watches from the window of her train on her daily commute to and from New York City.

We learn from her voice-over that Rachel used be married and lived a few houses down from the couple, but because of her raging alcoholism and inability to have a baby, her husband Tom (Justin Theroux) left her for another woman.

It starts getting complicated when we meet Megan and Anna, who, like Rachel, have their own voice-over narrations and chapter headings. Megan (Haley Bennett) is the woman of the couple Rachel has been watching, who just happens to be the nanny for Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), the woman that Rachel’s husband left her for, and they now live in the house that Rachel used to live in with Tom.

On one fateful train ride, Rachel sees Megan kissing a man who’s not her husband on the porch of her home and it shatters Rachel’s world. Rachel gets even drunker than usual, which isn’t difficult because she carries around a Camelback thermos filled with vodka, and she gets off at the stop near the couple’s house and her old home. Rachel sees a blonde woman walking that she thinks is Anna (Megan and Anna resemble each other from a distance because of their long blonde hair) and she yells “slut!” at her and follows her into a pedestrian tunnel.

What happens next is the movie’s mystery as Rachel blacks out, and when she comes to back at her apartment the next morning, she’s covered in blood and has no memory as to what happened.

Turns out Megan has gone missing and Rachel is a suspect in her disappearance as she gathers from the Detective, played by a smirking, skeptical Allison Janney, who comes to question her.

Rachel becomes obsessed with what happened that night, and contacts Megan’s distraught husband Scott (Luke Evans) to tell him that she saw his wife with another man. That other man is revealed to be Megan’s therapist, Dr. Kamal Abdic (Édgar Ramírez), who we see Megan trying to seduce in flashbacks.

The book was called “this year’s ‘Gone Girl’ by many critics, but the movie doesn’t have it in it to make the stylish statement that the movie adaptation GONE GIRL made so superbly. In over words, Tate Taylor is no David Fincher. The film is a poor man's GONE GIRL at best.

Yet, that’s not to say there isn’t style here, and there’s an unnerving tone present that underscores much of the film’s jittery energy. Much of it largely helped into shape by Blunt’s frazzled performance of the heartbroken mess that is Rachel, who spends the movie covered in layers of heavy, grey winter clothing (this helped to hide Blunt’s pregnancy during filming). Despite what we learn of Rachel’s past, and what we see of her questionable present, it’s hard not to feel for the woman, and hope she’s not guilty of murder.

As for the other woman, Bennett, who also appears in this season’s THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN re-imagining, makes an picturesque impression as the beautiful woman that you know doesn’t feel beautiful on the inside, while Ferguson is the most unattended to character here.

Unfortunately, the fluidity of the film’s first three thirds is replaced by a more routine and predictable wrap up, which we have to get through some blatant red herrings to get to.

Taylor, working from a screenplay adaptation of Hawkins’ book (which I haven’t read) by Erin Cressida Wilson (SECRETARY – yay!, MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN – boo!), has crafted a film that has the look and feel of a sophisticated, psychological thriller, but underneath lies a lot of familiar conventions, and tropes that Hitchcock, as well as devotees like De Palma have worn to death long ago.

The premise of not being able to trust yourself, or having trusted others too much is a compelling one, especially within a murder mystery in which one doesn’t know if they’re the murderer or not, but despite some intense imagery, and the somewhat intriguing inner monologues, I bet this material had a lot more impact on the page.

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SICARIO: A Superbly Dark Cartel Counterinsurgency Thriller

Now playing at multiplexes from here to the borderline:

SICARIO (Dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

Emily Blunt proves her action star turn in last year’s terrific Tom Cruise vehicle EDGE OF TOMORROW was no fluke in this superbly dark cartel counterinsurgency thriller in which she plays a tough as nails F.B.I. agent named Kate Macer.

After a gripping opening that has she and her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluyya) storming a Mexican drug lord's safe house in Arizona, Kate gets recruited by Department of Defense advisers Matt Graver (a typically brash Josh Brolin) and Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro) for a high-risk CIA-led drug operation across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Kate increasingly senses that the system behind the mission is incredibly corrupt, partly because she can’t figure out who the task force actually works for (particularly De Toro’s ultra shady Alejandro), and if their tactics are doing more harm than good, especially in the chaos of a traffic jam shootout on the outside of Juarez, Mexico.

The team is following a bloody trail that leads to drug kingpin Fausto Alarcon (Julio Cedillo), who it is revealed brutally murdered Alejandro’s wife and daughter. Kate learns this following a raid of the cartel's secret cocaine-smuggling tunnel that runs beneath the border - one of several stunning, standout set pieces on hand.

SICARIO, which is Spanish for “hitman,” is Villeneuve’s most fully realized work. The director’s previous films, including INCENDIES, PRISONERS, and ENEMY were intriguing and fairly solid, but this intensely driven treatise has really seared itself into my psyche in a much more profound way.

Working from a well crafted screenplay by Taylor Sheridan (Sons of Anarchy), Villeneuve keeps us up close with the characters, but knows when to give us distance via striking long shots impeccably filmed by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins. Incidentally, Villeneuve and Deakins have been both tapped to do the long awaited sequel to BLADE RUNNER. Their riveting work here makes me think they could seriously do that project justice.

Justice is what Blunt’s Kate desperately wants here in the murky, immoral terrain that makes up SICARIO, and the actress puts forth a lot of power in both the pulse pounding action moments, and in the edgy confrontations with those she doesn’t trust. People who don’t know the British actress (her American accent here is spot on) by now are really missing out – the woman has mad range.

However, as good as Blunt is, Del Toro steals every scene he’s in, and he does it by barely speaking. His cold yet fascinating presence has us questioning his motives as much as Blunt does, and when he does speak – every word has disturbing weight.

SICARIO may stir memories of such like-minded thrillers such as Steven Soderbergh’s TRAFFIC and Kathryn Bigelow’s ZERO DARK THIRTY, but it has something those otherwise fine films were strongly lacking: a real conscience.

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EDGE OF TOMORROW: Terrible Title; Terrific Presentation

Opening today at a multiplex near you:

EDGE OF TOMORROW (Dir. Doug Liman, 2014)

First off, it’s a terrible title. It’s so generic; it sounds like a James Bond movie or Star Trek episode title. Maybe it should’ve been called: BETTER THAN OBLIVION.

Secondly, this really doesn’t need to be in 3D. It’s another one of those films that underwent a post conversion into the gimmicky format, and, as I’ve complained about many times before, it makes the image darker and less vivid.

But those gripes aside, Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi action vehicle is a smart, funny, and insanely inventive entry in the summer blockbuster sweepstakes of 2014. Sure, its high concept premise can succinctly summed up as ALIENS meets GROUNDHOG DAY, but it takes that thread and goes its own clever places with it.

Cruise, as an army major who's so not a top gun, is forced into the front lines of an invasion of earth by squid-like aliens, nicknamed "mimics." In a Normandy beach battle, obviously reminiscent of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, Cruise, outfitted in bulky body gear, kills a mimic but then gets melted in a bath of its acidic blood.

Then Cruise wakes up on the previous day at the army base at Heathrow Airport. Everything that happened to him before - Bill Paxton as a FULL METAL JACKET-style Sergeant yelling at him, members of his platoon ridiculing him, and multi-tentacled monsters murdering him - happens again, despite his crazy-sounding warnings or attempts to reverse the situation.

Very amusingly, Cruise's day of death resets again and again, with our protagonist each time gaining a little more info on how to plot more successful moves throughout it. This is where Emily Blunt, harder edged than we've ever seen her, comes in as a heroic Special Forces soldier, who Cruise learns has once been a looper herself.

You see, as Noah Taylor as a scruffy scientist explains, the mimics have the ability to reset the time stream in order to improve their strategic edge in combat, and when Cruise and Blunt killed and got wasted in the remains of an Alpha Mimic, they absorbed their time looping powers.

In punchy training montages, that surely will be as scrutinized by film geeks trying to figure how many days or years Cruise relives the same day as Bill Murray's montages in GROUNDHOG DAY have been, our hero gets into shape, gains confidence, and, of course, falls for Blunt.

The movie, adapted by frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John Henry Butterworth from Hiroshi Sakuraska's 2004 novel “All You Need Is Kill,” loses a bit of its power when Cruise himself loses his time-looping power, and its big action climax involving massive destruction of the Louvre is pretty predictable, but overall Cruise's sharp performance carries us through a series of gripping sequences making up one of the most compelling narratives I've seen at the multiplex in recent memory.

A lot of the fun is seeing Cruise's character evolve from being a stuffy coward to being a lean, mean fighting machine, something the man can still successfully pull off at 52 years of age. All the baggage that biases many movie-goers against Cruise - couch jumping, creepy accusations that he brainwashed Katie Holmes with Scientology, etc. - all disappear a few minutes into EDGE OF TOMORROW. 

The man's charisma even helps the exposition scenes to be engaging. In one of them, when he tells Taylor and Blunt “Terrific presentation, terrific!” he may as well be talking about the film itself.

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LOOPER: A Compellingly Crafted Time Travel Thriller

Now playing at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

LOOPER (Dir. Rian Johnson, 2012)

At first, it’s a bit jarring to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt made to look like Bruce Willis via prosthetic makeup. But Gordon-Levitt, has so got Willis’ mannerisms, and soft spoken voice down that the impression works, that is, until the real Willis shows up and it’s a little jarring again. However, it still works.

Set in Kansas City in 2044, Gordon-Levitt, as he tells us in his opening voice-over narration, is a low-level “Looper,” a hit-man who kills people that the mafia in 2074 sends back via illegal time travel technology. To close a looper’s contract, they send back the older version to be killed by their younger selves, and are paid off with gold bars. It’s a job that doesn’t attract “forward thinking people,” Gordon Levitt notes.

A frantic fellow looper (Paul Dano), when confronted with his older self, is unable to “close the loop,” as they call it, he goes into hiding in a floor safe in Gordon-Levitt’s apartment. A bearded wizened and jaded Jeff Daniels, as a gang boss from the future, offers a deal in which if Gordon-Levitt gives up Dano’s location, he can keep all the silver he’s been saving up. Gordon-Levitt takes the deal, but then finds out that his own loop is set to be closed.

Willis is able to escape from his younger self, upon appearing from the future, but not long after that they have a face-to-face at a diner, and Willis speaks of how, in 30 years, his wife (Qing Xu) will be murdered love by a powerful villain called “The Rainmaker.” Willis came back in time to kill the child who will grow up to be this bigwig baddie.

Did you get all that? Yes, it’s a movie in which the convolutions swirl around you, but you can’t help to get caught up in them. Even when the film downshifts from the expected, yet still engrossing action sequences (shoot-ups, chases, fight scenes, etc.), into a quieter second half that takes place on a farm owned by Emily Blunt, who just may be the mother of the future “Rainmaker,” its spell still holds you.

Willis doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and doesn’t need much, but what he has, like when he talks of the woman whose life he’s trying save, he really sells. Considering his younger self to be a self absorbed junkie, Willis provides a gruff contrast to Gordon-Levitt’s stoic smoothness.

The rest of the well-chosen cast have their moments. Daniels basically has one major speech to give before spending the rest of the movie as an order barking heavy, but he pulls off both superbly.

Blunt, could be seen as a gratuitous love-interest for Gordon-Levitt, yet her frightened eyed delivery is “on,” and it’s fun to see her smoke an invisible cigarette (another thing to look forward to in the future).

A few of Daniels’ thugs are notable too - Noah Segan, as a clumsily trigger happy goon, and Garret Dillahunt as a much more professional assassin.

With its superb sci-fi premise, exemplary effects, and top-notch performances, Rian Johnson, who directed the brilliant BRICK (also starring Gordon-Levitt), and the not-bad THE BROTHERS BLOOM, has compellingly crafted a well above average action thriller. Its ending might feel a little off, but the fact that it doesn’t allow easily for a sequel makes it all the more refreshing.

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THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU (Dir. George Nolfi, 2011)

As the youngest Congressman ever elected to the House of Representatives, Matt Damon can win over crowds just by flashing his blinding grin as this film’s opening montage of his senate campaign attests. But his bid for office is derailed when photos of an old college prank surface, and he ends up losing even in his home county.

Nevertheless Damon while preparing to deliver his concession still has reason to flash that grin as he has a “meet cute” with Emily Blunt funnily enough in a restroom at the Waldorf Astoria.

Blunt just happened to hiding from security in the men’s room stall because she crashed a wedding in case you are wondering.

They flirt then kiss, but don’t exchange names or phone numbers so when Damon is whisked away by his campaign manager (Michael Kelly), and Blunt is spotted by hotel security, fate seems to separate them.

Or that’s what “they” want Damon to think. Who are “they”, you ask? Why they’re the ones behind the scenes manipulating circumstances to influence human history.

They are men who wear classic suits and sport fedoras who will make you think of Mad Men especially since John Slattery is one of them.

When another member of the “intervention team” (as Slattery calls it), played by Anthony Mackie fails to divert Damon off his course to a meeting, things go askew.

Damon runs into Blunt on a bus and this time gets her digits, but then walks into an office of his frozen-in-time co-workers being scanned (or something) by, yep, the Adjustment Bureau.

In a huge shiny warehouse setting, Damon is told by Slattery and Mackie that he will be reset – that is, his mind will be erased if he tells anybody about them, and more importantly he can never be with Blunt.

Slattery burns the card with her phone number on it right in front of Damon to hammer home the point.

3 years pass and Damon is back on the campaign trail and lo and behold he sees Blunt on the street on the same bus route. The spark is still there as they chitchat while Slattery and crew surround them.

The film then becomes a series of elaborate chase scenes with brief exposition breaks. The men of the Bureau can use any door as a portal to a different place – but, only if they are wearing their fedoras. That and other nonsensical rules of the team tracking Damon are never satisfyingly explained, and the supposed plan they follow appears to be ultimately flexible.

Yet there is some fun to be had here. Damon and Blunt’s performances are top notch and at times it’s a treat to watch them run around through a well shot New York City.

Slattery and second half stealing Terrence Stamp bring gravitas to the convoluted material which is loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick short story from 1954.

The directorial debut of screenwriter George Nolfi (BOURNE ULTIMATUM, OCEAN'S 12, THE SENTINEL), THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU simply isn’t inventive enough to be a memorable mind bender a la INCEPTION. In other words you're not left with anything really to discuss or think about afterwards.

It strives to be a modern surreal take on a classic Hitchcockian thriller, but it’s more on the VANILLA SKY-side.

Stamp tells Damon that he never actually had free will – he only had the illusion of free will. Well, in this film, the illusion of intelligent entertainment is all we get.

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