One of Canada's pre-eminent auteur filmmakers, Atom Egoyan has been celebrated internationally, earning multiple awards from the prestigious Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals and an Academy Award nomination. One of his most accomplished and controversial early works, The Adjuster, is a dark drama about the complex and intense relationship between an insurance adjuster and his clients.


In this accessible analysis, Tom McSorley traces the genesis, production, and reception of Egoyan's fourth feature film, from its Cannes Film Festival premiere to its North American commercial release. The book locates The Adjuster in the larger context of Canadian cinema history's peculiar and often troubled evolution, and offers a provocative interpretation of the film's unique analysis of the malaise of materialism in North American culture. Richly illustrated and featuring new interview material with Egoyan himself, this study in the Canadian Cinema series offers an insightful review of one of Atom Egoyan's most searching, unsettling films.