“Push”
Short version: If “Trainspotting” and “The Bourne Identity” gangbanged the first half of “Heroes” Season 3 and made it not suck, this is what you’d get. It’s a neat sideways look at the ever-popular “people with superpowers” theme, spruced up by Paul McGuigan’s kinetic directing and some dazzling visual effects.
Long version (including SPOILERS) after the jump.
The Plot
Post-World War II, world governments have been experimenting on people with psychic powers to turn them into weapons. Many people with talents have escaped and gone underground, living on the fringes of society. One such is Nick Gant (Chris Evans), eking out a living in Hong Kong using his telekinetic powers to win dice and card games (albeit not very often). Nick is approached by a teenager named Cassie Holmes (A punked-out Dakota Fanning), who wants his help rescuing an escapee from Division, the U.S. gov’t’s branch of metahuman affairs. The escapee, Kate (Camilla Belle) is wanted by both Agent Carver of Division (Djimon Hounsou in full-out ruthless villain mode) and the local Triads, many of whom have powered individuals of their own.
What I Liked
Probably the best thing about “Push” is that it doesn’t waste the audience’s time with the hero/heroine discovering their powers. At nearly two hours, the movie is already crammed full of information (much of which is covered in an opening-credits monologue), and the story starts with Nick, Cassie, etc. already familiar with their abilities and how they work.
Another good thing about “Push” is that the abilities are actually grounded in a reasonable framework. Rather than having skinny girls bench-pressing Buicks or guys shooting lasers from their eyes, all of the powered individuals of the movie have some iteration of psychic abilities. There are telekinetics (”movers”), psychics (”pushers,”), precognitives (”watchers”), illusionists (”shifters”), and healers (I forget their nickname). This means you see some duplication of powers, and it also enables the cast to understand each others’ motives and plan accordingly, especially in a complex sequence where Nick has to rely on random, unplanned actions to dodge a precognitive working for the Triad who’s been dogging their every move.
The movie is set completely in Hong Kong, enabling Paul McGuigan to take full advantage of the city’s dazzling skyscrapers and brutal slums in equal measure. McGuigan (who did “Gangster No.1″ and “Lucky Number Slevin”) knows how to shoot an urban landscape and take full advantage of every nook and cranny. McGuigan’s camerawork is more like what’d you’d expect from a Jason Bourne flick, with lots of shaky-cam, blurred figures in the frame, soft focus, etc. Not your typical wide-angle lens work that you’d see on “Heroes” or in “X-Men.” Two standout sequences are a telekinetic gunfight between Nick and Carver’s henchman Victor (Neil Jackson, aka Marcus Van Sciver from “Blade”), and a grudge match between Nick and Victor at the climax of the film where they batter each other with TK-enhanced punches. Each power has a signature effect–the pushers’ eyes go dark and oily, and the movers’ TK blasts are accompanied by bursts of light. The consistency is a welcome respite from other movies and shows of the genre, where characters’ powers rise and fall according to needs of plot.
The cast is largely good, with Evans ably essaying the role of the reluctant hero, while Fanning goes full-throttle into the shoes of a rebellious adolescent cursed with a gift and a responsibility to use it. (The scene where she gets drunk off the cheap wine is a standout.) Hounsou, who usually plays the noble sort, clearly relishes his chance to go all-out bad-ass villain.
The most interesting part of the film comes with two twists. The first being that Kate’s memories may not be what we were led to believe they were due to a “push” from Carver, and that Cassie’s mother, a tremendously powerful psychic imprisoned by Division, may be exerting her reach to set events in motion nonetheless. There’s obvious setup for a sequel at the end, but the movie also takes pains to ensure that if there isn’t another “Push,” the story can end with some closure.
What I Didn’t Like
Camilla Belle just doesn’t move me as an actress. Her range in every movie I’ve seen her in seems to be to just stand there silently with big brown doe eyes. Because the plot hinges so much on her and what she does, it’s a letdown to see that she can’t carry the ball as well as her co-stars.
Many of the Chinese supporting cast were either horribly overdubbed or just can’t act, but I found myself wishing they’d speak in Chinese with English subtitles just so we wouldn’t have to hear them try to enunciate. At the same time, Neil Jackson has almost no dialogue, even though he’s in the film more than Camilla Belle–probably because he couldn’t hide his British accent, and it would strain credulity to have an East African and a Londoner working for the U.S. gov’t.
The downside of the characters’ familiarity with their powers is that everyone seems to know exactly what a pusher, watcher, mover, etc. is. (”Oh, you’re a pusher!”) That got irritating fast.
Overall
Although “Push” doesn’t break any new ground in the well-trod theme of mutants/superheroes/metas fighting shadowy government agencies, it does tell a good story and adds some maturity, consistency, and smarts to a chestnut that can often go off the rails with serious consequences. Scriptwriter David Bourla needs to get on the “Heroes” writing team with the quickness and get them in fighting trim, because “Push” is a good example of how to tell a story like this right. Well recommended.
February 8th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
I liked it. It made me think of Heroes crossed with the idea behind Jumper, just not awful. Major spoilers to follow.
I think the major failing of the movie is that the mythos is a bit too complex for the screen time, which leads to what you noted, the whole “Everyone involved already knows everything” gets old fast.
Also, the plot point where Nick doesn’t use his powers much and sucks at them is quickly dropped. He goes from struggling to manipulate some dice to having full on TK battles with the immensely powerful Viktor… without even the benefit of a training montage! :-p
The other disbelief point for me was the ease at which affable Nick – underground, sucking at his powers, is so plugged into the rogue psychic friends network that he is able to easy assemble an Ocean’s 11 caliber group to beat the US Division, the Triads, and I suppose the Chinese version of Division by extension.
Since I love to nitpick, Precognition is something that is always hard to manage, both in terms of logic and consistency, and this movie isn’t able to fully juggle it either. The two leading theories that movies usually try to put forward are the Probability Analysis and the High Power. Heroes, for example, uses the latter… Why do the Psychics always paint important and relevant scenes of the future? Its left unsaid, but the Higher Power motive is certainly alluded to. Push tries to limit it to psychic links, reading intentions, and probability… Such that any “future” is so fragile that it is possible that simply knowing about it can change it.
Case in point, the Triads jump Nick and Cassie because they foresaw them hooking up with Callie, and in doing so, nearly screwed themselves. I like this version in general, because its relatively easy to use in the story, but then is made murky by Cassie’s Mother, a Watcher of such godlike power that she was able to forsee and manipulate events more than a decade in advance! If Cassie and Lollipop Girl require intent, the mother does not since people surely had no intent when she made predictions :-p
Lastly, the Body Manipulator chick was a “Stitch” and the one loose end that puzzled me is they never said why she hated Nick? Did she have a history with his Dad?
Overall, I enjoyed the movie and would welcome a sequel.