182: Push

Push (PG-13) - 2009 - Runtime: 111 minutes
Director: Paul McGuigan
Starring: Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou

"A poor man's X-Men."

They tried really hard with this one. I guess an "A" for effort? Push is a story about ummm, pushers (who don't really push. The guys who push are called movers). Are you following me? Because I sure as hell couldn't follow this mess of a movie. Supposedly there's all these crazy folks out there with supernatural abilities who are being tracked down by clandestine government operation(s). Am I watching X-Men or Heroes? Anyway, there's this girl - isn't it always about a girl? - that escaped from the government's grasp and stole a secret formula which makes them super-super humans. Or it... controls them? I don't know! This movie falls under the weight of its own mythology and stumbles on a significant amount of plot holes.

For example, everyone wants this syringe with the formula, including the government agency that created it! Why on earth do they want it back when they could just look at the scientist's notes and recreate it is beyond me. And then they could kill all the pushers, movers, watchers, sniffers (seriously, there are people who sniff stuff to find out where people are) involved. This Chinese mafia group wants it, too. I didn't know they were mafia until halfway through - I just thought they were government cronies. And that made me feel stupid, which a movie should never do. But the whole damn problem with this plot, which is the major focal point of the entire movie - the formula doesn't work, it kills whomever they inject it into. Except Camilla Belle's character. Of course, the government wants her, but they really want this formula! And so does the mafia! They're both pretty daft if you ask me.

I feel like the writer wanted to create this cool movie/universe, but couldn't be bothered with details or rules. The logic for some of the characters' powers was seriously flawed. Watchers could see the future, but it's always changing, yet they could know exactly what's going to happen next. And sniffers could find out where a person was by sniffing something they touched, but that doesn't make sense. Because how could an object like my toothbrush tell someone where I would be next week through its scent? Especially if I haven't used said toothbrush in 10 years. Yeah, that happens in the movie.

As you can tell I was quite dissatisfied with the whole experience. And there really wasn't a whole lot of action. You see the poster? Yep, that's about as much action as you'll get in this movie. They also leave you hanging at the end. Which I don't mind, but the problem with this is that they make a big deal out of a couple of characters' stories and they never resolve them at the end. Dear God I hope they don't make a sequel called Pull.

Oh and one more thing. Why the hell were all these Brits and Americans running around in Hong Kong? They never once explained this. Is Hong Kong cool now? Is that where all the kids hang out? Maybe I'll take my Vespa scooter through the streets of HK and find a tree to sit under and write poetry in my moleskin journal. (Thanks for the inspiration, SWPL).

Rating: Not Worth Paying For