Movie Review: Push – Starring Dakota Fanning & Chris Evans

Movie: Push (PG-13)
Released: February 6th, 2009
Runtime: 1 hr. 51 min.
Ticket Price: $5.00 Early Matinee
Refreshments: Starburst
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Djimon Hounsou, Chris Evans, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis & Ming Na
Director: Paul McGuigan

Rating: Wait for the Rental, if Not Longer

Synopsis: Some people are born with psychic abilities and a group is out to find and enhance those abilities to create an unstoppable army. A young girl that can see the future and a guy that can move things with his mind team up to stop a vial of the enhancing serum from being retrieved by the nefarious group after it is stolen from them and hidden.

Review: Push is a convoluted sci-fi action flick that starts off interesting and then makes you say, “Well that doesn’t make any sense, why would they do that?,” way too many times.

When I saw the trailer for Push the first time, and given the similar release date as well, it made me think it was going to be another Jumper. A bunch of cool sci-fi fight scenes wrapped up in a movie with very little story and even less back-story.

Yet, Push sucked differently. It gives you an interesting premise and actually has a back-story that they late out in the opening voiceover. The problem is that the story being told within that context doesn’t make any sense. I heard one fellow moviegoer tell another on the way out of the theater that it was good, but confusing. I wondered if this could be the case, cause I sort of felt the same way.

After having pondered it a little over the last few hours thinking about what to say in this review, I came to the conclusion that Push couldn’t be both good and confusing.

Unfortunately, Push reminded me of the last volume of NBC’s Heroes. It seems that it is hard to come up with new and compelling ways to tell stories about people with superhuman abilities. This one had a good premise, but fizzled in the execution. It is one of those movies where none the events in it would have ever taken place, if the covert group of bad guys had just done one thing differently in the past. Something that makes more sense to me for them to have done given what they are trying to do. So, for me the movie ends up being almost a total waste.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Push, cause mine are pretty much as convoluted as the movie was.

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Jason of New Movie Friday
1 comment… add one
  • Sandra Mabry Oct 29, 2011, 2:32 pm

    My Husband & I are watching it now. We got it from Netflix & when we opened the Netflix package we didn’t even recall adding it to our list but thought well we must have seen the preview and liked that. The back story they give makes it sound like it’s gonna be a interesting deep movie
    …that in itself is what messes things up for the viewer as the movie moves forward. I don’t think it’s horrible but leave your common sense abilities out of the movie to enjoy it. It’s like a car wreck on the Interstate…you know you really shouldn’t be watching but you just can’t help yourself. Just sit back & let yourself fade into this odd world in which your watching!!

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