“Listen to me Nick. Someday a girl is going to give you a flower. You have to help her Nick. Help her, help us all.”

The Scoop: 2009 PG-13, directed by Paul McGuigan and starring Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans and Djimon Hounsou

Tagline: One push can change everything.

Summary Capsule: Think X-Men. Now think of third-rate, bargain discount X-Men. You’re getting close.

Justin’s rating: You already know the ending of this review, so why bother to rate it?

Justin’s review: There are two scifi/fantasy naming conventions that are overused to the point of illegal abuse.  The first is to designate an alien or otherwise foreign race by throwing in a healthy dose of apostrophes (the “Xan’dik” or “Jan P’ind’lynny”).

The second is to take ordinary, everyday words and capitalize the first letter, and then feel as if you’ve done something original.  So “others” becomes Others, “darkness” becomes the Darkness, and so on.  Push pushed my eye twitching mechanism to the fullest by labeling all of its psychically talented crowd with a huge array of capital letters – Bleeders, Movers, Pushers, Shadowers, Sniffers, Shifters, Watchers, Wipers and Stitchers.

Okay, so, overused.  And yet it grew on me, somewhat like this film, which took two tottering steps toward the superhero genre, two sideways toward a gritty crime thriller, and then lurched back into the gutter, where it tossed its cookies and stared up at the stars.  Push isn’t a movie where anyone’s going to walk away going, “I HAVE FOUND A NEW PURPOSE FOR MY LIFE, AND IT IS THIS FILM,” but they may possibly grunt and feel as if they hadn’t entirely wasted two hours.  It’s the small victories that you savor the most.

Push is the muddled tale of a Mover (telekinetic) named Nick, who acts on the foresight of an unknown Watcher (sees the future) in befriending a young Dakota Fanning (also a Watcher) and going on a hunt through Hong Kong for a black briefcase and its mysterious innards.  They’re almost immediately on the run from a superpowered local crime family, as well as the big-d Division, a government agency that enjoys kidnapping and experimenting on these special people to make them tick even stronger.  Fortunately, Nick is barely amiable enough to have befriended a few enabled friends himself, and sort of assembles a team to carry out this mission.

This is that kind of movie where you watch it and instinctively know that, in the hands of a better director, better actors, and a much better editor, it would’ve really done some business in the box office.  As it is, it’s a very second-tier production.  You don’t dislike it, but you’re not emotionally moved, overly thrilled or even mildly tricked (as much as Push tries to con you at times).  It’s like a small theater production – it gets on the stage and tries not to do too much to damage its reputation before the curtain closes.  And that’s even with Fanning’s character getting really drunk at one point.

More than anything, Push felt like the pilot of a TV series – a crossbreed of Heroes and Lost, perhaps – that was setting up some great epic quest with an epic showdown that we’ll never get to see.  It irritates me when movies end on a note that stinks to high heaven of “gee, hope we get to make the sequel!”  I mean, good for its aspirations and whatnot, but it’s not passing the job interview with me for doing so.

Still, if you like movies of the superhero mold, then Push has enough meat among its gristle to chew, and a few great scenes of powers vs. powers to fill you up.  Hm.  It might be dinner time for me.  I’m hungry.

Intermission!

• The choice to shoot the film in Hong Kong was inspired by the classic film Casablanca
• Director Paul McGuigan tried to limit the use of digital effects as much as possible, recalling the great directors who didn’t have such means available to them yet made up for them with their imagination. In fact the only scenes in which green screens were used were the car chases, as Hong Kong traffic is very heavy.
• In order to deal with the constant bustle of Hong Kong, director Paul McGuigan and the crew decided to shoot the film “guerilla-style”, with the cameras hidden in vans, filming through small holes, and the actors doing their scenes in one take on the streets.

Groovy Quotes

Henry Carver: You already know the ending to this story. You can only draw it so many ways.
Cassie Holmes: We’re going to change it.

Nick Gant: Did you lose a bet with your hairdresser?
Cassie Holmes: No! I just like color!

Pop Girl: Stupid child. I already saw how you die.
Cassie Holmes: Then you know it’s not here, and it’s not today.

Cassie Holmes: Where’s the chicky-chicky who gets us all killed?
Nick Gant: Are you drunk?
Cassie Holmes: Yeah.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Heroes
• X-Men
• Twilight (yeah, baby!)