Tuesday, February 17, 2009

A Movie Review: Push (2009)


Push (2009)
Director - Paul McGuigan
Release Date: 6 February 2009 (USA)
Runtime: 111 min
Cast
Cassie Holmes - Dakota Fanning
Nick Grant - Chris Evans
Kira Hudson - Camilla Belle


Once I have completed writing this, I will completely forget that I ever saw the film Push.

Voice over explains the back-story, sort of, and tells of a post Nazi government program containing divisions and watchers and pushers and all sorts of crazy-type sci-fi groups. Of course I still don’t really know what happened 2 hours later.

Shot in a disconcerting and grainy texture with unrelenting flashbacks and premonitions that don’t make sense because we don’t know enough about the plot for them to mean anything, the film is sort of a stir-fry concoction of science-fiction films of the past. Trying to figure out what is happening is very taxing on the brain, especially with all the screaming and breaking glass, something you’ll hopefully never understand since I am strongly suggesting at this point you not see this film.

Dakota Fanning is Cassie, a watcher, she sees things, such as the future. She is in Hong Kong and for some reason she is wearing a mini-skirt. Her mom was taken for her powers to see also. Cassie is there to help Nick (Chris Evans) do what? Find a case that has a serum that can kill them, etc. It really isn’t all that important, as the film doesn’t even hinge so much on the case as it does on the flashbacks and foreshadows.

A strange undercurrent of a score throughout the entire movie that sounds like someone left a drink on a synthesizer keyboard is never quite relinquished, and I found my mind wandering to different places hoping that somebody would pull a fire alarm so that I could stop watching the movie entirely.

Somehow a love interest develops with Nick and Kira (Camilla Belle) but for no real plot reasons. Kira, as you may want to know, plays a role in this film but I’ll be honest and just say I don’t know what function she had other than to be there and speak from time to time. This is unfortunate too, because I did gather from pieces of the film that she is an important character, just not important enough to make us understand why she is important.

All kinds of magical powers ensue with none of them being all that impressive. And I still don’t know what is going on or why. When they think about what they will do, watchers see it and find them and kill them, I am pretty sure of that. At no point in this movie did I feel sympathy for any of the characters for any reason. I don’t feel for their plight nor do I understand it fully. The acting is pretty basic but watchable, which makes it all the worse because I wanted to try and get into it but just couldn’t allow myself to go down that path.
3/10

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