movie: Push
Nov. 24th, 2009 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreRecently, I mentioned that I never seem to post about the movies I actually like anymore. So! A movie I mostly liked!
During WWII, the Nazis experimented on people to create superhumans with various psychic powers. The war ended, but the experiments didn’t. Today(ish) an organization called The Division controls most superhumans, and wants to get their hands on the rest. Nick’s father was killed by a Division agent when Nick was 10, and he’s been on the run ever since. He’s a telekinetic, but has little control over his powers because he’s never been trained. Meanwhile, The Division has been trying to create a drug to enhance the psychics’ powers, but every attempt results in a dead psychic. The only exception is Kira, a young telepath, who escapes after being injected. Linking them is Cassie, a 13-year-old with an unreliable ability to see the future, whose mother is the most powerful seer ever, and has been locked up by The Division for years.
Push’s take on superhumans is interesting, as does it’s ideas regarding gender roles in heroism. The characters with aggressive, action-y powers (mostly white men) are pretty much the tools of people with more passive, “secondary” powers (mostly women) and the two Damsels in Distress are pretty much the most powerful forces in that world. The more traditional heroic (and villainous) figures are more the weapons the real heroes use. Nick’s enmity with the agent who killed his father, which would normal be mentioned every 5 minutes, is almost a complete non-issue, and the posturing rivalry plotline is with Cassie and another seer. And, you know, actually kinda interesting. The movie also caters quite nicely to my kink for scruffy loners with cute wee snarky accessories. And there’s bonus Ming Na, Djimon Hounsou, and Joel Gretsch.
On the flipside, the movie tries and fails at something of a “superhero noir” and ends up just being painfully slow at times, and they try so hard to keep us guessing with Kira that her character is all over the place, and there’s never really anything solid to grab on to. And…ok, frankly, large chunks of the movie could be summed up as “an evil black man and a bunch of evil Chinese people chase quasi-heroic young white people through Hong Kong.”
During WWII, the Nazis experimented on people to create superhumans with various psychic powers. The war ended, but the experiments didn’t. Today(ish) an organization called The Division controls most superhumans, and wants to get their hands on the rest. Nick’s father was killed by a Division agent when Nick was 10, and he’s been on the run ever since. He’s a telekinetic, but has little control over his powers because he’s never been trained. Meanwhile, The Division has been trying to create a drug to enhance the psychics’ powers, but every attempt results in a dead psychic. The only exception is Kira, a young telepath, who escapes after being injected. Linking them is Cassie, a 13-year-old with an unreliable ability to see the future, whose mother is the most powerful seer ever, and has been locked up by The Division for years.
Push’s take on superhumans is interesting, as does it’s ideas regarding gender roles in heroism. The characters with aggressive, action-y powers (mostly white men) are pretty much the tools of people with more passive, “secondary” powers (mostly women) and the two Damsels in Distress are pretty much the most powerful forces in that world. The more traditional heroic (and villainous) figures are more the weapons the real heroes use. Nick’s enmity with the agent who killed his father, which would normal be mentioned every 5 minutes, is almost a complete non-issue, and the posturing rivalry plotline is with Cassie and another seer. And, you know, actually kinda interesting. The movie also caters quite nicely to my kink for scruffy loners with cute wee snarky accessories. And there’s bonus Ming Na, Djimon Hounsou, and Joel Gretsch.
On the flipside, the movie tries and fails at something of a “superhero noir” and ends up just being painfully slow at times, and they try so hard to keep us guessing with Kira that her character is all over the place, and there’s never really anything solid to grab on to. And…ok, frankly, large chunks of the movie could be summed up as “an evil black man and a bunch of evil Chinese people chase quasi-heroic young white people through Hong Kong.”
no subject
Date: 2009-11-26 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-27 01:44 am (UTC)