Movie Review: Push

The Good:
Acting: Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning interact with each other well.
Action: For a lower-budget film there's a few great scenes of chaos.

The Bad:
Story: A bit too convoluted.
Characters: Dakota Fanning's character isn't exactly age-appropriate for her.



The Plot:
A telekinetic gambling addict (Chris Evans) in China meets up with a clairvoyant teenager (Dakota Fanning) who tells him that they have to find a girl that escaped from a government lab before special agents with their own abilities do.

In a world of non-stop superhero flicks there eventually comes a time where we just get sick of men and women in tights...OK maybe not women so much but my point is that writers are beginning to embrace storylines about humans with abilities instead of heroes with powers.

On television we have Heroes, but the problem is that show began spinning out of control at around the first season with so many characters and so many arcs. Hell it got so out of control that they simply wrote some characters out without any clue as to what happened to them.

Tackling the film world with this concept is Push, A film along the lines of Heroes, but delivered in a somewhat better package. Push has shining moments in terms of its characters and action, but it's not without its flaws.

The film has some qualities about it that make it a fun and entertaining watch. The fights using telekinesis are great, one in particular where Evans and a rival "mover" trade bullets from guns they are floating around the room with their minds. That's right, they have a telekinetic gunfight. The final climax where different abilities are flying left and right is also pretty exciting.

The chemistry between Fanning and Evans (and by chemistry I mean brother-sister since Fanning is barely a teenager) is genuine. Evans has got a lot of charisma that's carried over in a lot of his films. Let's face it, he was about the only good thing about the Fantastic 4 movies. Fanning, if she keeps the coke out of her nose, has got a promising career because she is a superb actress. Though this role is not as precocious and cutesy as her past roles, she steps up to the challenge excellently.

However, one thing that wasn't sitting right with me throughout the movie was how much they were seemingly trying to paint a sexy image on Fanning in terms of her personality and wardrobe. Her dirty mouth and hooker boots/mini-skirt ensemble really gave me a creepy vibe from the film makers, especially with certain camera angles. I'm not trying to be a prude, but she's still a kid and people need to take responsibility for that.

The biggest flaw with Push is its story. As said before, Heroes suffers from having too many eggs in one basket. Push treads on thin ice with that department. While there aren't as many characters to juggle, they've taken what could have been a fairly straightforward plot and jumbled it all up, adding in a gang of Chinese Triads with their own abilities and changing potential futures that just over complicate things. Why so many films rely on the gimmicks of twists and turns is beyond me, I miss exciting straight and narrow storytelling.

Not to focus too much on the negative though, I will say that Push has its moments that really make it an entertaining ride. It's nothing substantial to the sci-fi genre, but it makes for enjoyable fare.

Grade: B-