Eye Candy #130 - "Push"

Push: Imagine a world where people have been genetically engineered to have special psychic abilities including telekinesis, precognition, and mind control, amongst other powers. Now throw in a shadowy group called Division that wants to harness those abilities for their own use and…well, you have a lot of the plot of the TV show “Heroes” covered. “Push” is chock full of superhero-y hijinks with nary a sympathetic character to behold and a plot that’s cribbed from easily half-a-dozen other films and TV shows that did it earlier and better than “Push”. Chris Evans is Nick Gant, a telekinetic living below the radar in Hong Kong (I guess as much as a big tall White guy can when surrounded by Asian people). He is approached by a young psychic with foreshadowing abilities (played by Dakota Fanning) to help her steal a specific case containing an augmentation drug that will either boost your abilities or kill you in the process. This brings him into conflict with local super-powered Chinese triad gangsters and the head of the American Division group, Carver (Djimon Hounsou), who also possesses special abilities. Hijinks ensue. Really, this was fairly underwhelming. Rather than making the characters unique in a pedestrian world, we are treated almost exclusively to a world where everyone you meet on screen has some kind of powers. And the action set pieces are downright silly. A fight at a construction site was apparently chosen just so Asian stuntmen could fly into different colored bags of smoke powder. Director Paul McGuigan is either hit or miss with his films. This is a miss. Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”