I'd been looking forward to PUSH. These are concepts near and dear to my heart, and I was excited to see the director talking intelligently about them way back when.
The credits themselves were decent, but the opening voiceover is awful. Pure, awkward exposition, with Dakota Fanning reading her lines with just nothing behind it?
Arghhh...
I should probably get this out of the way first. Dakota Fanning still sounds like she's eight years old. And it's not cute anymore. The girl can barely say "generation", for goodness sake. Her attempts to be badass or intense are just laughable, and she hardly emotes throughout the movie, except when she's crying for about 20 seconds. She can't do a very good drunk, either. There's just no tension or sense of emotion to any scene she's in, and that means that you basically just don't give two ****s about her mother, or her friendship with whatever Chris Evans' character was named, or her rivalry with Quiet Pointless Chinese Girl. Who in the world decided that a bland little girl who looks like a frog should be the next big female star?
Now, then.
PUSH feels a lot like a TV movie. And it's a lot like HEROES. That's a valid comparison people have been making.
It seems to have been written by someone with a rudimentary knowledge of psychic abilities who watched a few episodes of HEROES, and they do nothing with it. It quickly devolves into "Look! Kewl powers!" It also features amazing dialogue like "You have a plane to catch" and "I already know you're there", and everyone's favorite, "Kill him."
The story is sort of there, but the interesting elements of the story also happen to be really predictable. A story isn't "a new development" every minute and a half. None of the story elements breathe. It's just not interesting or compelling. At all. The love story is just forced. As. Hell.
On a personal note, I freaking hate when movies, in an attempt to establish some random emotional connection, have a character go "Do you remember when we did this or that", not that we've ever seen that. That's just ****e writing. Just ****e. And this movie tries to make a twist out of that...but it has just NO weight, because...you guessed it...we never saw it or heard it referenced.
Whoever made this ridiculous statement: This isn't a character film; character films have character development. This movie barely had a story, let alone character development.
But wait...because there is also:
-A random sex scene!
-Random shots of Chinese we're supposed to assume are evil doing...stuff.
-Several shots of people walking down the hallway in slow motion!
Not a fan of the directing overall, though it's passable, I guess. I hate the lighting, and the director seems to have found the least interesting way to present flashbacks, mind****s, etc.
Actingwise, well, I've already pointed out that Dakota Fanning is just useless.
Chris Evans, who was decent in CELLULAR and the FOUR movies is very one note here. He has charisma, but this sort of works against him sometimes. When he's supposed to be scared, he looks perplexed and charismatic instead, etc. Dipping him in blood kind of helps him seem a bit grittier.
Djimon Hounsou does what he can with...nothing. There's literally no development to his villain. He apparently just wants power for some reason.
Belle is just there. She's not good or bad, she's just sort of there. I think she moves her face like, four or five times.
The supporting cast isn't anything to write home about, but most of them are better than Dakota Fanning.
The action is decent, I guess, if a bit lacking in tension in places. Some decent moves in the first "push" fight in that restaurant. The final action scene isn't bad, either, with some nice effects. Multicolored powders? Falling bamboo? Whatever!
The music is distracting. Incredibly distracting. Every quiet moment or introduction has some weird pop song over it. There is so much crappy, generic techno music in this movie it's not funny. I don't know if it's supposed to help the pacing or mood or something, but it doesn't. It's like it tried to help PUSH be SPY GAME, but tripped over itself repeatedly and failed miserably. It reminded me of SPAWN in places. Who the hell thought that would be a good idea?
This is the kind of movie that has to remind us with a flashback, the stakes of the movie, and then at the end of the movie, has to pull the same trick again.
I am also tired of service elevators being used for drama and tension building.
So I was disappointed, and then some. Could care less if there's a sequel.
Maybe a 6.5 or a 7. Maybe. The cast tries (sort of), and there are a few redeeming elements, like the idea of implanted memories, manipulation, etc.
. I couldnt stand " the chinese banshee brothers" enough was enough of them. Camilla bell..was hawt,but her looks could only get her by for so long
