The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

The Adjustment Bureau" is about the conflict between free will and predestination. Which is short hand for what is the meaning of life. Either it makes a difference what you choose to do, or the book had already been written, and all you can do is turn the pages. The movie is based on a Phillip Dick story about an army of "adjusters" who move a strange thing there and a known thing here, just to be sure everything proceeds according to plan. Whose plan? Not revealed. The adjusters aren't big on explanations. They're like undercover agents for a higher power, not of a religious sort but more of a Big Brother.
But the best-laid planssometimes stray. Random chance barges in, and its interference must be corrected. In "The Adjustment Bureau," Matt Damon plays a congressional candidate named David Morris, who walks into a men's room he has every reason to believe is empty, and who should emerge from one of the stalls but Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). What was she doing there? The important thing is, these two people, who were never intended to meet, have that particular chemistry that equals love of your life romance. They know it, we know it, and when their eyes and lips meet, their stories become entangled.
They part, Morris goes on to some recovered success, and then at one point he becomes aware of certain men wearing suits and fedoras, who strangely start to appear in his life. He meets two of them: Mitchell and Richardson (Anthony Mackie and John Slattery). They explain that they work for a bureau that makes corrections when things go slightly wrong. For her sake and his, David must not see her again.
So this is where it gets intriguing. They do meet again. But this time, they recognize each other, you see, because they had met earlier. Which is very bad if you are an adjuster.
The plot develops into a cat-and-mouse game of the mind, in which David and Elise, in love and feeling as if they're destined for each other, try to outsmart or elude the men in the suits and hats. This is fun, and because Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have an easy rapport, it doesn't seem as preposterous as it is. Beneath its apparent sci-fi levels, a romantic comedy lurks here, and the combination is a winner.
"The Adjustment Bureau" is a smart and good movie. What David and Elise signify by their adventures, I think, is that we're all in this together, and we're all on our own. If you follow that through, the implications are treacherous, but in the short term, however, the movie is a sorta heartwarming entertainment.