Reviewed by Alicia Glass

Review Rating: 7

People with supernatural powers go looking for a prophesied girl while being chased by shady branches of the government called Divisions.

I saw the trailer for this movie and said ooh, it looks like an X-Men style story, we gotta see that. Sadly, it’s more in a Firestarter wanna-be style, and even that rather falls flat. The basic idea is that people with supernatural powers do exist, taken as a given, and that governments around the world have taken it upon themselves to attempt to govern these poor souls, in groups called Divisions. As we can imagine, these Divisions do all sorts of experiments on these kids, just because well, they can. And lo and behold, this one drug that’s supposed to enhance the supernatural powers but instead kills the recipient, is injected to one particular woman who doesn’t die, but rather uses her juiced up person to escape. It gets mildly confusing after that, as this movie uses different terms than what we sci-fi geeks are used to: Watchers for Pre-Cognitives, Push-ers for Post-Hypnotic Suggestion, that kind of thing, and doesn’t really explain the similarities throughout most of the movie.

Chris Evans, of Fantastic Four fame, does a fine job as main character Nick Gant, and his powers (and control over them) do seem to grow as the movie progresses. Djimon Hounsou does a perfectly serviceable job as bad guy Henry Carver, although I have to say his poor character completely lacks in the scary department. And of course, my personal favorite, Dakota Fanning in the role of Cassie Holmes, the spunky Watcher with the pink streaks in her hair and her drawing pad. Yes there is a scene in the movie where Cassie goes out and gets completely plastered in downtown Hong Kong, Fanning pulls it off in a riotously funny manner, her indomitably spirited character almost saves the movie single-handedly.

Push is in need of a larger push in order to get better ratings, but, try it anyway. Variety in sci-fi is good.