THE PLANK FEBRUARY 6, 2009
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Has Marvel comics somehow copyrighted not only the X-Men, but the actual descriptive term "mutant"? I ask because the word is conspicuously absent from Push, director Paul McGuigan's highly X-Menny little action thriller. Instead, his super-powered youth on the run from a diabolical, quasi-military organization that wants to weaponize them are called "psychics," even though not all of their abilities seem mind-related. Sure, there are telekinetic "movers," precognitive "watchers," and telepathic "pushers," but what is one to make of the "bleeders," who scream so loudly that they can shatter glass and wood and make their enemies' heads explode? (A response, I should note, not unlike my own to Steve Martin’s accent in The Pink Panther 2.)
The story, such as it is, revolves around a mover named Nick (Chris Evans) and a watcher named Cassie (Dakota Fanning) who are trying to get their hands on a case whose contents will give them leverage against "The Division" and its deadly operative Carver (Djimon Hounsou). That is, until Nick's old flame Kira (Camilla Belle) shows up and Cassie is pushed a bit to the side. (It sucks being thirteen.) There's much hiding and chasing and fighting across the underbelly of Hong Kong; psychics with other abilities--healing wounds, altering matter, sensing an object's "memories," etc.--are consulted and confronted; tough-guy dialogue is exchanged by all.
Evans brings his usual surfer charm to the proceedings, and Fanning is awkwardly endearing, teetering on the cusp between girlhood and maturity. Belle, though, is blank as a page, and the intended romantic chemistry between her and Evans is never in evidence. At one point in the film, she turns on him and we're meant to wonder whether she merely brainwashed him into believing they were in love, or Carver brainwashed her into believing they weren't. Alas, Push had failed to brainwash me into caring one way or the other.
--Christopher Orr
3 comments
Nine out of ten Holllywood flicks: If you take away the special effects and the preternatural powers of the protagonists, few would watch them at all. The plot would collapse into gibberish, the characters into caricatures of the caricatures and the denoument would forever remain unknown because no one would make it that far into the picture.
On the other hand, escapism [especially in this day and age] may well become more and more the rage. As the world we actually live in succumbs to increasingly more dysfunctional relationships...and as our power to change them diminishes...many of us might search out imaginary characters interacting in imaginary plots in order to project our imaginary strategies for regaining control.
And then someone will make a Hollywood film about making a Hollywood film about that.
george
- iambiguous
February 6, 2009 at 2:19pm
When times are tough, the tough flee reality. We had to look away.
But everything in moderation. Up to here with comic book images (still or moving, animated or flesh-based), I've lately had a hankerin' for some good old fashioned Soviet-bloc architectural drawings. Black rectangles on white paper. Every window, every vision the same. Buildings that no one is able to leap in a single bound. The Audacity of Rebar!
The poetry of the abandoned over-leveraged cookie-cutter subdivisions of Nevada, Florida, California, and the rest of Walmart Nation is waiting to be written.
- williamyard
February 6, 2009 at 2:31pm
Isn't this movie just the same as "Jumper," but with a slightly different sci-fi-fantasy power?
- benjamin81
February 9, 2009 at 5:29pm