Push (2009)

[valtyr]

I watched this primarily because it has Chris Evans + superpowers, but found it a lot of fun. The plot gets a bit murky and confusing in places, but it does some interesting things with premonition. Some elements that early pinged me as a bit weird later turned out to be deliberately so in a plot-significant way.

What I was surprised by was the diversity of the cast. The film is set in Hong Kong, and while the three protagonists and most of the main group of villains are white, there are supporting heroic characters who aren't white, the primary antagonist is black and there's a separate group of Chinese antagonists. There are three significant characters who are women of colour.

There's also a lot of female characters, and they're pretty cool. A thirteen year old pre-cognitive, an older precognitive, a badass telepath on the run, a psychic surgeon, a tracker. And there's the thirteen-year-old's mother, who appears only briefly but is an off-screen chessmaster type who heavily influences the plot.

The two precogs have a tense rivalry, talking about their powers, the mother, and the predicted death of one of them. The girl and the surgeon talk about the mother. The girl and the precog talk about the telepath. While Chris Evans' character is the lead, the story is driven primarily by the two lead women. All the women are competent, decently characterised, and have their own agendas. While most of the action scenes are men (both telekinetics we see are male; there's some showy use of the powers in combat I enjoyed) there's a couple of decent ones with women.

It's not an amazing movie, but I found it enjoyable and interesting, and it passes the Bechdel test with flying colours and makes it look easy. I would happily watch an entire movie about the two pre-cogs and their rivalry; their scenes together were fantastic.

Comments

[havocthecat]

For me, the basic story of Push is of a little girl with a big burden who's terrified of disappointing her mother, and a mother we can't see who has faith in her child and is waiting for her daughter to rescue her. But I'm not a Chris Evans fangirl. (He's okay! But I'm not watching the movie for him; I'm watching for the secondary characters.)

[valtyr]

It's a bit of a strange movie, as it presents Chris Evans' character as the protagonist, but his story is barely-there; he's just got that enmity towards the guy who killed his dad, and he doesn't even kill him in the end. The important stories are those of the little girl, and the escaping woman. Chris Evans' character should really be a supporting character.

[havocthecat]

I see so many people who write fic killing Kira off and ageing Cassie up so they can ship her with Nick. Which just makes me so. annoyed. Cassie is a seer just coming into her powers, and watching her grow up is a beautiful thing, so I understand when people want to focus on her.

But. Kira is a powerful woman in her own right, and the very end of the movie shows her taking her agency back from Division. Killing her off is skeevy. The fact that Kira is played by Camilla Belle, a woman of Brazilian descent, makes it even skeevier.

I clearly need to rip my DVD of Push so I can load it on my cell phone and re-watch it all the time.

[shallowness]

While a lot of the reason I adore this movie is to do with the character of Cassie Holmes, the world it shows and the various other characters - and as you highlight from looking at it from this perspective - drew me in. Cassie's relationship with Pop Girl is fascinating, and yes, the supporting characters, many of whom are women are interesting, although as you say, the action ends up being man-on-man, but Cassie's mom's role runs throughout the film, for all that we barely see her.