Push, like The Fury (1978) and Firestarter (1984) before it, deals with a small group of young people with superhero-level psychic powers, on the run from evil government operatives who are either psychic themselves, or just heavily armed and ruthless. The new film is roughly as successful as its predecessors — in other words, it’s badly flawed, but likely to be embraced by people who are into this sort of thing, most of whom are 13-year-old boys. That's not meant to be insulting; I was a 13-year-old boy myself once, and can still appreciate stuff like psychic assassins who can shatter every window in a building with a single hypersonic shriek.
The film introduces us to several different types of psychics (called things like Movers, Sniffers, Stitchers, etc.) and their various abilities, and we are intrigued. There's great potential here. During one armed showdown, two future-predicting “Watchers” try to bluff one another. “I've seen your death, little girl!” taunts the villain. “Then you know that it's not here, and it's not today” comes Dakota Fanning's calm reply. That's pretty neat. For the first 30 minutes or so, we hope that enough thought will be put into the film's premise that the whole thing will work flawlessly and stand up to multiple viewings — but no. Despite a peppering of clever moments, we soon find ourselves lurching into a honeycomb of plot holes. Even so, we remain optimistic, waiting for the next incredible psychic gun battle to commence. Perhaps we're in for a breathless Michael Bay-esque spectacle in which we don't worry about the plot because of all the awesome action setpieces! Nope. Thrilling though they are, there are only three major action sequences in the whole film, and they're over all too quickly.
So, the plot doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, and there isn't enough action to make this a roller-coaster ride. Is there anything else to make Push worth watching? Well, some of the characters’ psychic abilities are pretty cool. One guy can disguise small objects, flipping the same playing card up over and over, changing it from a 10 of spades to a queen of diamonds and so on. Later, he pulls a white piece of paper out of his wallet that turns into legal tender. “Sniffers” can psychically read the history of small objects, giving us a very clever high-speed reverse-time shot of everything that came into contact with a whisky glass in the last 48 hours. Conspirators implant false memories in their enemies, and telekinetically enhanced punches are thrown. Push might not work as a story or a spectacle, but it is kinda fun as a magic show.
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