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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply A Masterpiece

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan redefines the black comic satire of his earlier films ('Family Viewing', 'Speaking Parts'), but for all its dark wit and visual sophistication the effort doesn't add up to anything more than a cast of unattractive characters in search of a plot. These include, in ascending order of eccentricity: a handsome insurance agent who uses his control over the victims of catastrophe for sexual favors; his wife, a government film censor who secretly bootlegs violent porn movies for her apathetic sister; a filthy rich couple with a fetish for enacting elaborate exhibitionist fantasies; and so forth. The film is disturbing, perverse, sporadically funny, and totally original, bit also inscrutable to the point of confusion: it gives the impression of depth without clearly saying much about anything at all. Egoyan is a filmmaker of obvious and distinctive talents, but he needs (once again) to build a stronger story around his strange characters.

Words cannot express how much I love The Adjuster. It's actually been a while since I saw it, so I picked it up again, and well, fell in love with it once again. It's just that good.The cast consists of a Canadian dream cast du jour: Elias Koteas! Don Mckellar! Maury Chaykin! Arsinée Khanjian! They're all DYNAMITE here, playing some low down creepy characters here.Koteas plays the titular Adjuster in the movie, looking after people who've lost their houses in a fire. Khanjian plays his wife, who makes a living from being a censor for the government (!!), Don Mckellar plays the new censor that was hired who catches on very quickly how to move up in the world. I'd rather not get into Maury Chayken's character if you don't mind lol All of these characters intermingle with each other. There's not a huge story to be found here, more of a character study. And what a study it is, as you find out a little more about each character with every viewing, with some mysteries yet to reveal (What WAS with the Podiatrist?) Can't recommend this movie enough. I have to say this is Egoyan's crowning achievement, and I've been waiting for him to replicate it. (Instead, he's been giving us crap like Felicia's Journey)

To respond to a previous review that wrote that the fact that the censor wife tapes porn from work to show her sister since they share everything together isn't convincing---in the film the wife explains to her boss that she shared what she learned from school to her sister because she couldn't go to school, and that it is like that from where they're from. Egoyan didn't specify where they were from, but it is Armenia. The way I see it, I am convinced because it is a matter of culture and family in a more depraved country, and I got it immediately, and the fact isn't that the sisters' bond is strange, but like the wife said, it is like that where she comes from. To me, the movie is an extreme dramatization of a man too involved in his work, which in the end destroys his life and family in a climate of heightened modernity and an inevitable air of danger. In one of the film's most gruesome scenes, a man is masturbating outside the glass slide doors of the living room at night while the wife's sister is watching one of the taped porn movies. In another scene, the "filmmaker" greets the family and gives them each an identical jacket, designed like tacky franchises sold in amusement parks. There's a certain vulnerability about the way the family members take the jacket, as if the scene is trying to express an awkward sorrow about mass franchise and how it's crudely threw at people and families. What I found very, very amused and surprised by is how throughout the film I expected, in the end, the obscene couple to be exposed to the family then shame and explanation could to be provided as punishment for their deceit and nightmarish violation---but when the husband finally confronts the "filmmaker" while he is about to burn down his living room, he is shown as simply, understandably, INSANE.Their are certain unnecessary or unsubtle little spots of ambiguity in the film such as the wife's prior, semi-romantic encounter with her foot specialist on the subway, but then again, such details and the film's insistence in unpurifying EVERY relationship the adjuster has with his clients has its own reasons and means of defining and exposing the main characters that enhances the environment of robbed values the film so determinedly tries to create. Atom Egoyan stands out as a filmmaker of "ideas", and in this film as well as most of his images/pace/style express a lyrical modernity through a rich and mysterious vision. He is the most interesting provocateur.

'The Adjuster' is my fourth Atom Egoyan movie and on my first viewing I wasn't as impressed as I expected to be. A second more thoughtful viewing of it made me appreciate it a lot more. I still don't think it's as good as 'The Sweet Hereafter' or 'Felicia's Journey', but I still recommended it for those looking for something unusual and thought provoking. Egoyan makes very subtle and somewhat slow movies and they can sometimes be quite difficult viewing, but they are worth the effort. Once again he uses a fine ensemble cast and an uncliched approach to story telling, but once you get into the swing of it you'll be hooked. Elias Koteas ('Crash', 'The Prophecy', 'Gattaca') is a most underrated actor and his performance here as Noah an enigmatic insurance adjuster is utterly brilliant. Maury Chaykin ('Devil In A Blue Dress', 'Money For Nothing', 'Jerry And Tom') plays a wealthy ex-football player who crosses Noah's path and is also exceptional. Their complex performances make the movie for me. I also really liked the small supporting role by Don McKellar ('Roadkill', 'eXistenZ', 'Last Night') as a wanna be film censor. All three actors would work with Egoyan on subsequent projects, most notably 'Exotica', my first Egoyan experience. Of his four movies I have seen to date I would rank them in order 1. 'The Sweet Hereafter' 2. 'Felicia's Journey' 3. 'Exotica' and 4. 'The Adjuster'. They are all very good movies and highly recommended. For beginner's 'Felicia's Journey' is probably the most accessible, but 'The Sweet Hereafter' is his masterpiece, and one of the most haunting movies of recent years. Egoyan may go on to make even better movies but until then it's fascinating to watch 'The Adjuster'.