Over-Familiar Push Heads in the Wrong Direction
Nick Gant (Chris Evans) is living in Hong Kong going out of his way to keep secret his ability to move objects with his mind. As a child, he saw his father murdered for having this ability, a secret government agency called Division wanting the two of them to help their experimentation towards creating an army of superhuman soldiers none can stand against.
Chris Evans discovers just how much it hurts in Summit Entertainment's Push
Ten years have past since that tragic day, Nick’s skills at living off the grid finally at an end after a couple of U.S. operatives literally sniff him out. But they’re not interested in a bedraggled loser, they’re after a raven-haired beauty named Kira (Camilla Belle) who escaped their clutches with a super-secret drug which could potentially grant someone unlimited powers unlike any the world has ever seen.
Next thing he knows, Nick is thrust into a battle against a whole cadre of Chinese supervillains as well as Division’s top Agent, the brutally mysterious Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou), all of them sure he’s the key to getting their hands on both the drug and the girl. Yet he’s got a plan, and with the help of 13-year-old psychic Cassie (Dakota Fanning), as well as a gentle assist from a trio of friends whose powers aren’t all too dissimilar from his own, this forgotten nobody is determined to save the girl, stop the bad guys and become the type of hero no one, not even his compatriots, think he’s capable of turning into.
If you ever wondered what it would be like if someone crossed something like, say, Down by Law with X-Men, then Paul McGuigan’s Push is the movie you’ve been waiting eons for. The director follows up Lucky Number Slevin and Wicker Park with an odd, thankfully character-driven action epic that boasts a promising premise and an international crew of character actors (that also includes Cliff Curtis, Maggie Siff and Ming-Na) determined to invest all they’ve got into making it sing. It is, on paper at least, an intriguing curiosity, and as the curtain opens it’s hard not to hope that the film will come close to living up to its modestly captivating B-movie potential.
Unfortunately, writer David Bourla’s (Larceny) inert script calls to mind last year’s Doug Liman disaster Jumper more than it does anything else. Like that one, this one is also about young people with curious powers hunted down by a government agency intent on doing them harm. Also like that one it has a couple of nice performances and potentially interesting ideas but is unable to do anything of note with them.
More than those similarities, though, the film also shares the annoying ignominy of building to a climax only to leave things hanging on a cliffhanger hinting at a sequel that will probably never come. There is no satisfactory conclusion and very little is actually resolved, this world of Pushers (people who create false memories), Movers (telekinetics like Nick), Watchers (future-telling psychics like Cassie), Sniffs (human Bloodhounds) and more just barely getting started right as the movie itself infuriatingly comes to an end.
Unlike its counterpart, however, Push is not a total loss. Evans continues to shine no matter what the material, Fanning shows she might be more than just a cute little child actor after all and Hounsou dominates with an icy relish that’s truly unsettling. McGuigan stages a couple of nifty little low budget action scenes that scream of delightful inspiration, while Neil Davidge’s (Trouble the Water) percussively electronic score gives the film a bit more compulsive urgency than it ever would have had otherwise.
None of which is meant to say that the film manages to overcome its deficiencies and emerge even slightly triumphant. The movie is a mess, sometimes an obnoxious and belligerent one at that. It goes nowhere new and offers nothing we haven’t seen before, and while it’s nice the filmmakers put so much stock in building their characters three-dimensionally the fact they give them all nothing of interest or merit to do kind of defeats the purpose. Push just can’t find the right button to press, and no matter how fast the camera flies or how many bullets are fired the only thing super about any of this is being able to instantly forget about it just as soon as it comes to an end.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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