Push (2009) Paul McGuigan

Production Budget: $38 million Worldwide Gross: $34 million

The plot involves an evil government conspiracy to develop telepaths as weapons.  Anyone that has telepathic abilities are hunted down are hunted down by agents.  These people have many different powers like the ability to predict the future and the power to move objects.  Chris Evans plays Nick, a telepath on the run who gets caught up in a bigger plot.  He and Cassie (Dakota Fanning) must find a rogue teep who is on the run from Djimon Hounsou because, um, the fate of the world or some crap hangs in the balance.

Okay this movie seems interesting by the trailers.  It looks semi fun as you see people being knocked around like pinballs using their telekinetic powers.  That’s not really the case.  Push wants to be more a thriller than a heart pounding action movie.  In fact, for all the mystical wonderful amazing powers everyone has, they all seem to resort so semi-fair play by shooting each other and punching each other.  I guess its not all that useful after all.

The biggest problem is with the story.  The writers seem to love making up the rules as they go.  It seems like every 10 minutes they write themselves into a corner and they just make up a random power to write themselves out of that corner.  Now when you think of mental powers, you think of basically the power to read minds and telekinesis (the power to move items).  But no, here in the Push universe, the mind has more options than an extra large pack of crayons.  There are “sniffers” who can track people down.  How do we outsmart the sniffers so we can find the girl?  Why, use a shadow of course!  A shadow can use his mental powers specifically to hide a person from a sniffer.  How convenient!  But oh no!  The government also uses “watchers”; people who can see the future.  How do our heroes outsmart people that see the future?  Why, use “wipers” of course!  Then they use “pushers”.  Oh no, I don’t mean people that physically push things but mentally push people.  And there are “stitches” and more “pushers” and “intention watchers” and “screamers”…

Oh dear lord.  Yeah, we have “screamers”.  The most hilarious moments of the movie.  They are people that scream really loud in order to blast out people’s ear drums.  Whenever they do they make this face like they are about to shit themselves.  The director really tries to build these guys up like the agents from the Matrix, but its hard to be really scared of these guys when you nearly rupture your spleen laughing at their goofy ass faces.

But yeah, like I said, this movie seemingly makes this sh*t up as it goes.  Can’t actually think of a way to get your heroes out of danger?  Make up some new power to get yourself out of this mess.  Its like watching an episode of Voyager but instead of technobabble its psychic powers.

The acting is okay.  Djimon Housou is not screaming for a change, Chris Evans is alright, and Dakota Fanning just looks like a crack whore.  The action scenes are few and far between and when we do see them use their powers its underwhelming.  Its nothing like what is promised us in the trailers or even the poster.  The biggest FU is when they have the balls to threaten a sequel.  *shudders*  Don’t watch this movie.  It is poorly written and not interesting at all.