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You know a sci-fi script is in trouble when it spends the first five minutes narratively briefing you on its Byzantine plot -- and you're still not sure what's going on.
So it is with Push, a convoluted, poor-man's Blade Runner that is in love with its "startling" concept (seems there are superpowered folk among us that the government wants to either kill or make into supersoldiers -- yeah, I know, shades of Heroes and X-Men and Watchmen and others, but don't tell writer David Bourla).
So even before you meet your first Chinese "Pop Boy" who can make your ears bleed with his voice (koff -- William Hung -- koff), you've been lectured about "bleeders" like him, and "movers" and "watchers" and "pushers" and "stitches" and "sniffs" and "shadows" and well, it goes on and on.
It's almost as if Push strains to adhere to every narrative nook and cranny of some beloved graphic novel. But though it has since become a comic-book series, in fact, Push is strictly Bourla's geek creation (and not to be confused, by the way, with the other Push, the Oprah-approved movie that wowed Sundance, about an obese high-school-age urban single mother).
When the briefing is over, we meet Nick (Chris Evans), a telekinetic "mover" who's hiding out in a grimy flat in Hong Kong.
There he's hunted down by "sniffs" working for a secret U.S. Government office called The Division, run by a nasty "pusher" named Carver (Djimon Hounsou), who can put irresistible thoughts in your mind, even suicidal ones.
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After they threaten him and leave, Nick is located by Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a teenage "watcher" who draws the future (yep, Heroes again).
Conclusion: Nick is the world's worst hider.
Kind of like an on-the-run narrator, Cassie's premonitions help cut through the plot so that we can figure out that Carver and company are hunting down another pusher named Kira (Camilla Belle), who's also fled to Hong Kong, and who is the only super-thingie who's ever survived a government formula designed to enhance powers.
Naturally, they want her back.
For reasons apparently more about money than power, there's a super-powered Asian gang that's also hunting down Kira -- twice the telekinetic mayhem for the money.
Cost-conscious Scottish director Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) gets the most out of limited resources, often shooting right on the streets and fish markets in the middle of real crowds (some of whom seem annoyed at having to jostle with gwei-lo actors while trying to conduct business in Kowloon). With a few exceptions, the FX is pretty much all real pyro and stunt work, so the action is respectable.
It's just that it's all wasted on a story full of holes and characters made of cardboard (Fanning is the only one who succeeds in putting some flesh on her character, and even owns the movie's one memorable moment -- when she follows her long-lost mother's advice that alcohol sharpens her visions.
The result is Fanning convincingly playing a sick-to-her-stomach drunk teenager, a veritable milestone on her road from child actor to adult.
Oh well, at least Push will be remembered for something.