Push 2009

Push (2009) starring Dakota Fanning, Chris Evans, Dijimon Hounsou & Camilla Belle. Directed by Paul McGuigan  (Lucky Number Slevin, 2006). 3.5 stars out of 5.

Ok. So I'm still working on a ranking system. For now I'll simply highlight movies that score 3.5 stars or above and this means Go Watch It. Now let me get back to business: go watch Push.

Story: As a result of Nazi experiments, some people have powers of the following kind: Mover (telekinesis); Watcher (ability to predict the future); Pusher (ability to plant memories); and one unnamed type that boils down to the ability to scream until walls collapse and enemies die, something akin to a sonic attack. I like to call it "Yeller."

Division, a U.S. government organization, wants to control, experiment on and use these super-humans. Kira (Belle), a Pusher, is the sole survivor of a drug that can enhance the powers of these humans. She awaken from the experiment, steals the drug and runs away. A marble, dropped by a Watcher, rolls along halls and ends up keeping open the very door Kira needs to exit. Kira is invaluable to research so Division sends people to hunt her down. As foretold by a Watcher ten years ago, a Mover (Evans) and a teen-aged Watcher (Fanning) work together to find and help Kira. This is all part of a bigger plan that I won't go into further detail about. 

If one day you are forced to make a sci-fi movie on a small budget, give a white guy a few lines in Chinese. It's cheaper that CG. We all know ethnicity doesn't dictate citizenship and language or, to put it another way, people don't always live in the country or speak the language they look like they should. On this point, movie reality differs from ours. If a white guy speaks Chinese in a movie, it can only be one of two genres: science fiction or comedy. Nobody bats an eye at Asians speaking English, but when I see Caucasians and Africans speaking Cantonese, as in Push, it has a futuristic effect.

One observation about location. Although Push was filmed in Hong Kong, it is noticeably different from Chinese movies filmed there. HK movies capture a grittiness in everyday life that is missing from Push.