David Norris (Matt Damon) is a young politician running for the Senate in New York. He loses the election. However, at the end of his campaign, when he’s realised that he’s not going to win, he has a chance encounter with this woman that he immediately falls in love with immediately. Eventually he meets her again and The Adjustment Bureau steps in to try and hinder them ever having a relationship.

The film says that we don’t deserve the right to make our own choices, especially the big ones, and there’s someone out there who’s written a script as to what everyone is going to be doing for the rest of their lives. This man has all of these agents who’re a part of The Adjustment Bureau who make sure that tiny things that constantly nudge everyone along their scripted path.

The film moves in and out of the theme of fate and free will. Do you have free will or do you have an allusion of free will? The film says, without a doubt, that you do not have free will but rather an allusion of it. However, unlike most films that discuss this theme on a much higher philosophical level they’ve inserted this group of people (which honestly aren’t really people) who’re the ones pulling the strings to make sure you’re headed in the path they deem you need to go.

This is a discussion that if you’ve ever been in any Philosophy class room you’ve had and if you’re like me you’ve been the complete antagonist to make sure to aggravate and push people to think even more about the topic. Like any topic in philosophy there is no right answer and even when you reach a logical conclusion you still know that you’re not exactly correct and may probably never know who is correct, because if there was (or ever is) a way to tell that one answer is right and other is wrong then the discussion stops being philosophical and starts to be scientific. This is what I didn’t like about this movie, it took a philosophical topic and made it scientific, but then when we get to the exact end it became all philosophy all over again.

If you read the whole ‘chairman’ role as God and the agents – including Anthony Mackie and John Slattery – as angels then the film becomes a lot more critical of the religion and that’s actually an interesting topic up for discussion. Whenever something happens and it’s not what you planned a lot of people like to say, “God works in mysterious ways,” and, “He does everything for a reason,” which then brings into question finally what any good philosophical discussion does, it brings to question our own perception of reality. Did I make this decision or was it made for me? Do I make any decisions or am I a pawn that’s just being pushed along on the chess board of life? What happens if I go against the logical response? Is that my decision as well? It brings up so many questions that can never be invariably answered that you start to question the validity of thinking about it. Is ignorance bliss?

IMDB says 7.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes says 71%
I say 8.0/10