[Movies] Push (2009)

Superhero movies are just a few steps above video game movies, that we all know to be doomed to failure. We can end up with some pretty amazing ones like last year's Iron Man and you can also get really, really bad ones like the original Captain America movie or dare I say it - Catwoman. **shudders**

Hollywood clearly sees superhero movies as a high yield potential cash cow that can either hit or miss with the fans, but will still ensure a return on their investment since people get suckered into seeing it. It's an annoying practice but we all still buy into the mythos given we are fans at heart and we still retain the notion of hope that good depictions will come to fore some day.

This movie was clearly not one of those films that inspire us to hope against hope. In fact, this one probably "pushes" us further down the depths of despair.

Push is set in a world where Nazi experiments on humans to develop superpowers were revived by some mysterious group known as the Division. One such super-powered individual is the Mover / telekinetic Nick Gant (Chris Evans) who escaped the Division as a child and now tries to live a life in Hong Kong in relatively secrecy. His life changes when a Watcher / clairvoyant named Cassie Holmes (Datoka Fanning) seeks out his aid in saving a Pusher / telepath named Kira (Camilla Belle) who plays some larger role in things based on her visions.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Now that story does sound confusing (and it gets worse) and to be honest I only watched this movie in the hopes that there would be shirtless or nearly naked scenes for Chris Evans, who does satisfy many definitions of what constitutes as brainlessly hot by gay male standards. To suffer through the movie, all the while struggling to stay awake and to end up not getting aforementioned shirtless sequences was more than disappointing.

The entire movie can be described with a single word - flat. Whether used to describe the quality of the acting, the flimsy plot or the boring fight scenes, this remains the best adjective to use. The movie simply failed to be engaging on any level.

It started out with some potential - the universe described in the introduction along with a sampling of the types of super powers out there was pretty interesting and I was keen on seeing how things would go. Instead we ended up with a dragging story where the characters either barely used their powers or used them in ways that were not at all visually appealing / stimulating. Plus Chris Evans never took off his shirt.

Kudos to Dakota Fanning for proving to us that she continues to look as disturbing as she did as a much younger kid based on her earlier films. She's grown up to be even weirder and still relies on her eyes to do most of the acting. At least she made an attempt to act - Evans just sort of stood around in the same clothes for most of the film doing very little.

I would not wish the curse that is the movie Push on anyone and if you find yourself with no more books to read, nothing and no movies to watch except this one, I beg and urge you to not even consider this movie and turn away while you can. Seriously. This is not worth the damage it'll do to your brain.

Push gets 1 badly drawn image of the future out of 5.