Do not Adjust your hat

The Adjustment Bureau
DIRECTED BY: George Nolfi
STARRING: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terrence Stamp, John Slattery,
Anthony Mackie
CERT: 12A

IT’S not every day the ghost of John Calvin turns up at the movies.
The Adjustment Bureau is adapted from Philip K Dick’s 1954 short story, an exploration of the themes of predestination and free will, wrapped in a science fiction tale. For his directorial debut, screenwriter George Nolfi (Ocean’s Twelve, The Bourne Ultimatum) has taken that and wrapped it up further in a story about love against all odds. It doesn’t hold together like it might have but it’s an intriguing yarn all the same.
Matt Damon is New York politician, David Norris – insert joke of your Joyce here, har-har – a shoo-in for the Senate until his election hopes are busted by the emergence of an old college photo. Preparing his concession speech, he meets young British ballet dancer Elise (Blunt) in the hotel men’s room and his life and career take nice little turn.
Norris later discovers that this chance encounter wasn’t exactly that and that nothing much is left to chance by the Adjustment Bureau, a squad of agents in nifty Trilby hats whose job is to ensure that human lives take a certain path. Are they angels? Well, they’ve been called that.
Richardson (Slattery) and Mitchell (Mackie) are the adjusters assigned to Norris and they make clear there can be no deviations from The Plan laid down by their boss, The Chairman.
That means no hot-headed, free-spirited fine things like Elise can be allowed to complicate his destiny. But Norris is having none of it. He’s a man in love and the Bureau can shove it. Or they can bring in big chief Thompson (Stamp) and really start turning the screw.
If you think too long about the finer details, The Adjustment Bureau’s reasoning unravels while simultaneously your mind gets tangled in all sorts of knots. There are times, too, when it leans way over to the silly side.
Fortunately – and unlike its pretentious cousin, Inception – this story has a heart and so it is possible to leave your head behind and go with the flow. It also has two performers in the central roles who enjoy the kind of romantic chemistry that’s increasingly rare in the movies.
Stamp and his Bureau cohorts make a fine job of it too and there are cameos from the likes of Michael Bloomberg and The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart.
The film looks very good and New York plays a character all of its own as the cast race their way around the city through geography-bending portals, to the tune of a fine soundtrack.
It won’t be the last word on a centuries-old theological debate but it’s worth a gander and hey, it’s not every day you get to ponder predestination after a movie.

Unknown
DIRECTED BY: Jaume
Collet-Serra
STARRING: Liam Neeson,
Diane Kruger, Frank Langella, January Jones
CERT: 15A

THE marketing lads are flogging Unknown as something of a sibling to the shallow but enjoyable Taken. But viewers expecting another Super Ninja Neeson extravaganza will be a tad disappointed.
The big fella plays Dr Martin Harris, who arrives in Berlin with his wife Elizabeth (Jones) for a biotechnology conference. At the hotel, he realises he’s left his briefcase at the airport and legs it for a taxi back. The cab swerves to avoid a collision and ends up in the river.
The doctor wakes from a coma four days later and returns to the hotel – to discover that his wife hasn’t a clue who he is, that in fact she is with another man (Aidan Quinn) named Dr Martin Harris. 
Which is a bit of a surprise. So, after a fair bit of head scratching and with a little help from his heroic foreign taxi driver (Kruger), he wanders off to find out what’s going on. A bit like Harrison Ford in Frantic, when he came out of the shower to discover the wife gone. Which was a bit like Pam Ewing, whose dead husband Bobby emerged from the shower one morning…
Ok, it’s not on that scale of silliness. Actually it’s not entirely bad – it’s just a bit too ponderous and convoluted for its own good and way too slow to get to the part where Liam gets mad and skulls get broken.
But Neeson is always enjoyable to watch and he doesn’t let the side down here. The cast around him is not too shabby either and if the lovely Diane Kruger wants to keep on imagining that Irish men are all mythical, sure we won’t burst her bubble.