Push (2009)
Feb. 4th, 2012 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valtyr posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
bechdel_testI 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.
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.