It’s understandable Push bombed at the box office. It’s hard to find a film so with much intelligence in the filmmaking, casting and acting applied to such a subpar script. Strangely, David Bourla’s script isn’t bad in regard to dialogue—there are some great exchanges between Dakota Fanning and Chris Evans—or in how it’s plotted—the narrative twists and turns resemble those in a heist movie. Where it fails is in creating an engaging setting—Push is a superhero movie where everyone has boring superpowers (it sort of feels like Summit wanted a teen superhero franchise to go along with Twilight).
Director McGuigan picked the film’s Hong Kong setting because he wanted something exotic a la Casablanca… and it does work. Fanning and Evans are basically Bogart and Rains here—a mildly abrasive, endearing chemistry. But maybe McGuigan worrying about bringing that sensibility to a superpowers movie just can’t truly work with the silly concept. In fact, McGuigan constantly works against the superpowers element.
I’d never seen Fanning in anything; I was shocked how good her performance is in this film. She and Evans are fantastic together. It’s distressing Bourla could write this great relationship between them, but couldn’t not be goofy when writing the script in general. Push shows why an established mythology is easier to adapt than to create.
Push might be better if you’re a fifteen year-old, albeit one who wants to see a superhero movie more like Casablanca than Iron Man.
Still, it’s okay.
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