Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
2/12/09
“What if everything we did made no sense?”
-Nick Gant (Chris Evans), Push
They always say, if you don't
know what you're doing, fake it, and the cast and crew of Push can
be applauded for putting that advice to excellent use. Their movie
is alternately under- and over-developed, lethally talky and unengaging,
and doesn't even come to a satisfactory ending. But it's got charm
and spunk, and an excellent cast brings a level of quirky credibility to
the goings-on. Push isn't a good movie, but it is an enjoyable
one in large part because it's got that little quirky something that makes
a good movie great. In this case, that's enough to make a bad movie
perfectly OK.
Narration over the opening
credits explains a whole lotta stuff to us. Experiments begun by
the Nazis and continued by the US in later years created various groups
of superhuman people. “Watchers” can see the future, “Movers” can move
objects with their minds, “Pushers” can put thoughts in other people's
heads, stuff like that. “Division” is the government agency that
hunts the descendants of the original generations down, all in the name
of further experiments that seek to use dangerous chemicals to supercharge
those powers. Got that? Good, because they've finally found
their “Patient Zero” (a term the movie doesn't seem to understand) in Kira
(Camilla Belle), a Pusher who's the first person ever to survive an injection.
But she goes on the run and flees to Hong Kong with Division agents Henry
Carver (Djaimon Hounsou) and Victor Budarin (Neil Jackson) in pursuit.
Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, American Neil Gant (Chris Evans) has been hiding
out and making little use of his Mover powers since his father (the ridiculously
underemployed Joel Gretsch) took a bullet to save him ten years before.
He's approached by teenage Watcher Cassie (Dakota Fanning), whose Mother
has been abducted by Division and whose visions are leading her to partner
with Neil to find a mysterious briefcase that could Bring Division Down.
Turns out, Kira, who's an old flame of Neil's, hid the case and then had
her short-term memory erased (Wipers, I think...) so Watchers can't track
it. Now, with the help of a Shifter (Cliff Curtis), a Shadow (Nate
Mooney) and a Smeller (Ming-Na), they've got to find the case before either
Divison or a crime family with its' own Watcher (Lu Lu) does first, preferably
without Cassie's visions of all their deaths come true.
Still following? Push
is so dense with mythology you'd swear it was based on some pre-existing
property that had decades to build it up, but no, it's all the invention
of screenwriter David Bourla (making his feature debut but with a resume
of impressively crazy-sounding sci-fi TV movies like Doomsday Rock
and When Time Expires). I didn't even get to the Bleeders,
a couple of crazy brothers in that crime family who shriek like Banshees
until everything around them blows up, or the Stitcher (Maggie Siff), who
heals people and clearly was supposed to be in 4 scenes rather than three
because her motivation totally changes for no apparent reason while she's
off-screen. Push never entirely gets the bugs out of these
powers either, particularly the Watchers, who don't really see the future
so much as “read people's intentions”, meaning that if you don't know what
you're going to do next, they can't see it either (thus that glorious quote
I used above, heralding one of the strangest, most unlikely Master Plans
I've ever seen in a movie).
Director Paul McGuigan throws
everything but the kitchen sink at us visually but doesn't succeed at whipping
up much excitement or momentum. Because everything's so complicated,
the movie spends far too much time explaining itself, and then seems to
end about 5 to 10 minutes before it should (PLEASE tell me this isn't another
would-be trilogy knocking at my door). But what he does do is create
a “flying by the seat of our pants” tone that's charming and wacky even
when the plot seems to be standing still.
The actors are a big part
of that: Evans is a great leading man (if you've never seen Cellular,
you really need to) and effortlessly does everything the movie asks of
him with charm and spunk. The ever-underemployed Hounsou and Curtis
always elevate stock roles (the later is also able to make his powers seem
cool in a way that eludes most of the film), while Mooney does a great
job seeming unrehearsed. Jackson (a Palace favorite thanks to his
scene-stealing role on the Blade TV series) is awesome in a role
with few lines: he alone generates real physical excitement in the
action scenes. Belle isn't quite as crisp, but I did like the fact
that Kira doesn't seem nearly as nice as the other characters think she
is.
But the movie really belongs
to Fanning, playing both an edgier and funnier character than we're used
to seeing her as. She's growing up (Cassie constantly reminds us
that she looks 14), and this is a great teenage role, full of quirks like
the horror of being able to draw the future when you can't really draw
and a truly hilarious drunk scene after she thinks drinking will improve
her powers. Balancing innocence and bearing and showing great chemistry
with Evans, she gives us no reason to believe this next stage of her career
won't be even better than the last.
Push is pretty much
exclusively for genre fans: some will geek out on its' complex fantasy
world, while others like me will be tickled by its' goofy spontaneity and
chutzpah (like the guy who gets so pissed off he uses his powers to bring
a building down on his own head). It may not be able to walk the
walk, but it talks the talk, and in the chilly moviegoing off-season (or
future runs at its' real home on the Sci-Fi Channel), sometimes that's
good enough. |
