Movie loosely based on a short story by Philip K Dick, which pits a man against his destiny. Stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.
The story: David (Damon) fails to win a seat in congress. While practicing his concession speech he meets a beautiful girl Elise, (Emily Blunt) and is instantly attracted to her. Three years later he is preparing another run for Congress, this one sure to win when he runs into her again. The problem is now she might ruin his chance for Congress and later the Presidency because with her in his life he wn't feel that desperate need that is driving him toward public office. Now fate (or God or angels or whatever) has decided that they want his to be president so they attempt to break the couple up and David and Elise will have to go on the run to try to escape their fates to be together.
Was it good?
Almost. Parts of it were good, but it has a few problems.
First, the whole fate thing is pretty far-fetched. I mean, it's just really hard to by into, and then they have all these guys wearing hats like if fate were such an important thing then they would really let it be decided by whether or not someone is wearing a hat! So the concept itself is pretty weak.
Also, the whole driving force is that fate wants Damon to be president, but there is never any sense of why he needs to be president. So there isn't really a strong struggle here -- he could be with the woman he loves and be happy, or be president which would fulfill someone else's desire which is supposed to be important for some reason.
Now for all the hokeiness to it there are some things that work. The whole idea of fighting fate, of feeling like you are supposed to do something and struggling against it for your own happiness...well, it has a certain Romeo and Juliet quality that works.
And they did a decent job with the romance. It was easy to get a feel for why these two people, who really only spend a couple days together spread out over several years, would fight to be together. However, ultimately the problem is that the story wanders. If they had avoided the beat at the end of the second act when David breaks up with Elise so she can achieve her dream (without even talking to her about it!) and kept it about fate trying to seperate them, it would have worked better. The problem is that there's a difference in a story that is about two people who want to be together but fate is keeping them apart and a story about a man struggling with two choice on where his life should go, and this movie seems to confuse the two.
Still, even for all the hokeiness and story problems, if you are specificlly looking for an actiony-romance this will probably fill your need. And because I can be a sucker too...
*** RENTAL ***
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