I’m your pusher, man

Push
Review by Nathan Weinbender

An expository voiceover at the beginning of “Push” tells of a race of human who harness amazing psychic powers. We’re told that the Nazis utilized them in attempts to create super-soldiers that would be physically and mentally superior to mere mortals, and now a secret division of the government has taken the reigns of the shady experiments.

Some of their genetically-altered subjects are still around, and they and their descendants walk the streets, harboring abilities beyond our comprehension.

I perked up in my seat. This concept had potential. Imagine the historical ground the script could cover. Imagine how it could toy with our preconceived notions of the limitations of reality and how it could dodge down unexpected wormholes and emerge on the other side in an entirely different place.

My high expectations were quickly dashed. “Push” quickly descends into a dumb, routine story of good versus evil, developing a murky, complicated logic that consistently contradicts itself.

After that all-too-brief explanation regarding the origins of its characters, the movie puts us right in the middle of the action, hardly giving us a chance to gather our senses. (This is the type of picture that hurtles along at a mile a minute and hopes we’ll be able to keep up and understand the plot. We don’t always.)

The psychics in “Push” all have different monikers—Pushers, Movers, Watchers, Bleeders, Sniffs, etc.—and they aren’t defined by their abilities so much as by their usefulness in getting the screenplay from one point to another.

Chris Evans, for instance, is a Mover, and he has telekinetic abilities. He lives in China, for reasons I don’t remember, and one day Dakota Fanning is at his door. She’s a Watcher, meaning she can see into the future, and although her abilities aren’t fully developed, she knows they’re both in danger of being killed; why and for what reason she isn’t completely sure.

The bad guy is played by Djimon Hounsou, who, as far as I could gather, is a government agent looking for a missing briefcase containing a powerful serum. Camilla Belle, an old flame of the Evans character who has just escaped from an institution, shows up, too: She’s a Pusher and, in the film’s most convenient plot device, can make fiction a reality.

Am I overlooking important elements of the plot? I’m sure, but does it matter? Not really. The movie races through its plot as if there’s a time limit, and I couldn’t even begin to describe who certain characters are, why they do what they do and how they’re able to figure things out when their particular abilities should not allow it. I don’t know—it all seemed to make a lot more sense to itself than it did to me.

Grade: C

Directed by Paul McGuigan. Written by David Bourla. Starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou. PG-13; 111m.