PUSH
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There are good movies and there are bad movies, and then there are movies that you just don’t know what to make of. Push is such a movie.
This strange little tale could have been fantastic. The plot of the movie revolves around a bunch of people who have special abilities such as telekinesis (Movers), mind control (Pushers), seeing the future (Watchers), healing (Stichers), and killing people with high frequency shouts (Bleeders). Add the fact that there is a government agency, Division, trying to utilize their abilities for their own use it all sounds very exciting.
After a chilling opening narrative in which it is explained that the Nazi’s during WW2 experimented in making people into biological weapons, the story begins with a young woman escaping from a Division experimentation lab after being given a drug that would enhance her abilities. She is then systematically hunted down by Division’s crack team of genetically enhanced mercenaries. During the course of the movie she ends up in the care of an ex-lover with telekinetic abilities, a 14 year old girl with the power to see the future, a man with the ability to change the look of things for a limited time, a woman who can find things, and a guy with the ability of making other people seem invisible.
Push could have been something special and the opening few scenes promise so much; I must admit I was hooked by the Nazi experiments idea. The story was there. The budget was there. The talent was there. However, the movie was let down by inconsistencies throughout, the bleak Hong Kong setting, the MTV music video look that included moody slow motion scenes of people walking that wouldn’t be out of place in a Linkin Park video, and lengthy scenes where nothing much really happens. Oh, and there’s the fact that you didn’t really care if the main characters live or died, which if I may say is a must if you want people to sit through a two hour movie.
Another thing the movie suffered from is that the producers obviously didn’t know what genre and audience they were going for. The genre’s that pop up in this movie are drama, sci-fi, action, romance, thriller, and even chiller, but Push never puts it’s foot down to become one or the other, instead it hops (or maybe limps) from one to the other. It’s very rare that a multi genre movie works and this was not it. And as for the MTV music video style that dominated the look and feel of the movie… it was all way too much.
And yet it wasn’t enough.
As I stated earlier this could have been a great movie in the style of The 4400 (funnily enough The 4400’s Joel Gretsch had a small part at the beginning of Push) crossed with The Fugitive. Instead the producers went for a modern superhero movie, the story of which you might find in an episode of the lacklustre TV show Heroes.
What can I say in its defence? Not a lot. It’s certainly not the worst movie I have seen but it’s a million miles away from being one of my favourites. The visual FX that were well done and should have dominated the movie were way too few and far between and although there was some great talent involved in this movie it seemed for the most part that they were reading off of cue cards.
As for offensive content? I didn’t see or hear too much that would I would consider too offensive. That is if you don’t mind some bloody action styled violence such as fist fights, gun play, people being thrown around like rag dolls via some very powerful telekinesis, and exploding fish… yes exploding fish! But there is little in the way of profanity or sex; one scene hints at sex but nothing is shown. Some might find the whole premise and sub text of the movie unsettling as it deals with topics that some Christians consider anti-biblical such as telekinesis, mind control, and future sight, but I consider Push to be a work of fiction and I didn’t get the feeling I was being force fed someone’s agenda and ideals.
As a movie Push didn’t work for me. I wanted to like this movie. The premise promised so much; a high-action ride and a unique twist to an already well-used plot. And while Push does begin strongly, its loopholes and unsatisfactory ending eventually make a mess of the film. Maybe as a TV series with more time to work through the various characters, scenarios, and plot developments it would have worked better, but as a movie I felt it bit off a little more than we the viewer could digest in two hours. What surprises me after a quick visit to IMDB.com is that most people who watched this movie liked it, which proves that we are all different. However, I watched Push with my wife, daughter, and a friend of the family and none of us came away ranting about how good it was; one conversation I remember hearing went something like, “wow, that took a long time to get through” followed by “Yeah, I know. How can I get the last two hours of my life back?”
Christian St John M.Div, BChM, ACS
August, 2009
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