Today’s quick review: Push. Chris Evans stars as Nick, a down-on-his-luck telekinetic hiding out in Hong Kong from a government agency called Division that specializes in paranormal research. His life gets thrown into chaos when Cassie, a precognitive girl played by Dakota Fanning, shows up with the claim that their fates are bound together. The reappearance of Chris’s ex-girlfriend, an escapee from Division and the sole survivor of its power-augmentation experiments, sets both Division and a Hong Kong crime family on their trail. The outmatched trio must extricate themselves from an ever-tightening web of precognitive dead ends before they find themselves outwitted and trapped.
Push came out at the beginning of the modern superhero craze and was overshadowed by both the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Jumper the previous year. However, Push is a diamond in the rough, containing both a well-structured world of underground superpowers and one of the most elaborate precognition-based plotlines that has appeared in a movie. Unlike other entries into the genre, Push defines its superpowers rather closely. Each of the ten or so superpowers that appears in the movie falls into a known category and has a colloquial name for its practitioners: Mover, Shade, Stitch, Pusher, etc. Powers are a struggle to master, especially for poor Nick, and misapplication of them can land a person in hot water. But when they are applied correctly, they are glorious. Nearly every main power in Push gets used and abused in all the ways the audience could hope for, from levitating guns to illusory money.
The plot revolves heavily around a precognitive trap that the main characters fall into. As a Watcher, Cassie has reliable but uninformative visions of the future. When she predicts death for Nick and herself, that is what will happen unless they can find a way to change it. However, she is not the only Watcher, and every conscious decision the group makes can be tracked by others. This puts the group in a near-hopeless situation, and their only reprieve is the services of a tracking- and precognition-blocking Shade.
The result is a tense thriller with an exceedingly complicated plot. Just understanding who knows what, what can be changed, and what is predestined requires a good deal of concentration on a first watching. This makes Push somewhat inaccessible at first but quite rewarding for those who are willing to stick it out. Even the small portion of the world shown in the story is rich with color, and the plot forms a very clever puzzle whose pieces are interacting superpowers and competing plans. Push is a tense and creative superpowered thriller…if you can follow it. Watch it if you’re looking for a mentally challenging movie with high stakes and flashy action. 6.1 out of 10 on IMDB.