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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A CLASSIC OF CEREBRAL CINEMA, August 15, 2002
What little hope I held for the future of mankind retaining any intellect, capacity for introspection, or sense of humor is now gone due to the asinine, stupid, brain-dead comments below that this film is slow and stupid. THE ADJUSTER is a great film. Wicked, funny as all get out, darkly comic, sexy as hell, and perhaps the most chilling and dead-on critique of '666' and consumer-society ever filmed. Mychael Danna's score is Byzantine-perfect; Elias Koteas is at his peak as an enigmatic, lost soul. What's it about? Well, it's about us. Modern people in a listless, overindulged, sensate-conscious lifestyle flailing about in a Northern American state of emotional repression doing anything they can to give meaning to their lives, or rather, just accumulate more stimulation. And in such a society, who becomes a 'Christ' figure to people who can't afford one due to their lukewarmness? Well, an Insurance Adjuster, pal. Who else? The guy who evaluates your 'lifestyle' and returns a semblance of it to you. I mean, it is ALL 'lifestyle' now, isn't it? You don't need a Diety, do you? No, all you want is an insurance adjuster. He will even sleep with you. The ending quotes from "The Sound of Music" in a comic/horrific finale. One of the main characters - unable to 'play house' anymore in the landscape of modern time and space - decides to burn down the Insurance Adjuster's house he has rented - starts singing "My Favorite Things" as he proceeds to extinguish them all. Filmmaking doesn't get much more sly than that.
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