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Push
| Movie Rating: |
 | 6/10 |
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| DVD Rating: |
| 5/10 |
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| Overall Rating: |
| 6/10 |
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Movie Details: View Here
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Starring:
Chris Evans
Dakota Fanning
Camilla Belle
Djimon Hounsou
Special Features:
Audio Commentary with Director and Actors
Deleted Scenes with Director's Commentary
The Science Behind the Fiction Featurette
Other Info:
Video: Widescreen 2.35:1 Color (Anamorphic)
Audio: English: Dolby Digital 5.1 [CC]
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Run Time: 111 min
Rating: PG-13
Synopsis from DVD Cover:
Hang on tight as a gang of super-powered paranormal operatives takes you on a white-knuckle thrill ride. The excitement starts when a future-seeing Watcher (Dakota Fanning) convinces a telekinetic Mover (Chris Evans) to help steal a briefcase that holds a billion-dollar secret. But to outrun government agents, they must enlist a mind controlling Pusher (Camilla Belle) who could be their salvation - or their doom. Also starring Academy Award Nominee Djimon Hounsou, Push will pull you in completely.
Quick Review:
So I had a little bit of hesitation going in to "Push" because, from the trailers, it looked a little like "Jumper"-and that's never a good thing. It's better, though - I think due in large part to a mostly engaging cast and some original visual effects. Psychic powers and such being used by nefarious types has been done before, but "Push" has some inventive twists and an awfully scary bad guy (Djimon Hounsou); it's biggest flaw is that it's overly ambitious, and the ending feels more like a rush to set up a sequel than a proper climax.
Nick (Chris Evans) is living a lonely life in Hong Kong, eating cold chicken and sleeping alone while hiding out from the goons who offed his father ten years prior. Seems Nick is one of an elite group of people with special psychic abilities, just like his father, who can do things that lots of people want to have control of for weaponry possibilities. Enter Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a 13-year-old Watcher who can see and sketch the future - and who has seen that it's up to her and Nick to find one of their kind who's on the run with a mysterious drug that may be the key to saving them all.
The best parts of "Push" are one, the two leads, and two, the action. Evans and Fanning are likeable, have an easy brother-sister type camaraderie, and put in performances that are actually a little better than some of the writing they're given to work with. Hounsou is a perfect villain, menacing and charismatic, and most of the supporters are watchable - all except Camilla Belle. She's not horrible, but she's called upon to be something that she just doesn't pull off. Also of high quality is the action. In a film full of people with all kinds of psychic abilities, you expect to see some nifty tricks, and thanks to an inventive visual effects team, we get them - there's a scene with exploding fish that's spectacular, and even though it's a simple thing, guns moving on their own is a nice concept. The places where "Push" begins to falter are when it tries too hard to get a whole glut of plot into the last quarter of the movie. I felt like I needed a diagram to keep track of who was planning what and where everyone was supposed to be - it shouldn't be that complicated.
It seems like this is the kind of movie where Special Features could've really shined-why not something about Hong Kong, or the visual effects? Even a Making Of might have yielded some interesting tidbits. Instead, it's a fairly bare package. There's a friendly and forgettable Audio Commentary from director Paul McGuigan and actors Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning, some unnecessary Deleted Scenes (about three minutes worth), and my favorite, featurette "Push: The Science Behind the Fiction" (9:17), a look at some of the "actual" psychic stuff going on as told by a former Army colonel.
In Conclusion:
There are definitely some good parts, but "Push" suffers from being both too long and too short - it drags sometimes, yet seems to try and shove a whole lot in at the end. Not a waste of time, and way better than "Jumper," but a little too into its own coolness.
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