Movie review - Push

Seeing Push was a rarity nowadays in that I had little idea what the movie was about and had not seen any reviews, so I went in with an unbiased view. My guess is that critics will be nowhere near as favorable towards it as I, nor will the box office. Other than a few tv spots, there hasn't been a lot of hype.


In a nutshell, the movie is about people with super powers, but is a lot more Firestarter than X-Men. In fact, a lot of analogies can be drawn from Stephen King's original story, including the term "push". Of course, there is a big bad secret government organization that wants to use powered people as weapons.

Powered people, who don't have a name as a whole as opposed to the titles applied to different power categories, have their own sub-culture in the movie. The film quickly establishes its back story, a necessity since it can't take for granted that millions have read a comic. Of course I found myself thinking this would be a great basis for a campaign. The Division is the government organization, and since the story takes place in China there is also a Chinese equivalent. People that don't work for one of these groups try to stay off their radar, until of course the story pulls them in.

One category of powers would normally make a movie challenging to write. The Watchers are precogs, able to see the future. How do you have any suspense then? And how do you beat an enemy that can predict your moves? Partly because the future keeps changing, especially as Watchers find out about it and set events in motion to change it. Also, it is established early on that Watchers hinge on being able to see decisions. The protagonists come up with a clever way to deal with that which I won't spoil.

The only thing holding this movie back is there isn't a lot of "holy shit that's frakkin' cool!" moments and since it isn't an X-Menish movie the action isn't very intense. I know, I know, I want story *and* action... I'm a greedy bastard. Still, the movie, in y opinion, is very good and will be added to my library when it comes out on DVD. And I'm still chewing what game system I'd use.

My rating... 4 out 5 telekinetic precognitive flying monkeys.