Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Push

(2009)

It’s kind of sad, because this could have been good, except for a basic flaw: It never should have been made. Made as a two-hour movie, that is. It’s all about people with extra-sensory powers, living among us. But the trouble is, there are about nineteen different kinds of powers here, and they have to tell us about all of them in two hours. It’s not possible. The plot involves people who can see the future, Watchers … but only vaguely, and not for certain. And people who can move stuff with their minds, Pushers … but not reliably. That’s how it usually goes with psi powers in the movies. (And in real life, only in real life people who claim this sort of shit can’t make it work when they are observed … actually, not at all, in my opinion.) Most fun of all, there’s some guys who can make your eyeballs pop by shouting really loud. They are called Bleeders. Then there are Sniffs and Shifters and Wipers … a real zoo.

It’s way too complicated to get any deeper than that. Now, if it had been sold as a series, like Heroes (which it strongly resembles) or Orphan Black, there would have been time to let us get used to all this week to week. Here, there’s so much time taken up in explication that it just never added up. The only things worth seeing are little Dakota Fanning, who is always good, and the brightly surreal setting in Hong Kong, where it was filmed. Otherwise, skip this one.