Push: a vague review
10:40 AM 2/24/09 · Just to be up front about this, I'm not generally in favor of pirated films. I'd never buy one or spend any kinda money on one but the financial situation is not ideal right now. If I happen to stumble across one online then I'm going to watch it...
...and this past Sunday I saw Push on megavideo.com, though it remains on my rental list because whoever recorded the thing cut off all the subtitles for the Cantonese speaking parts. Video quality was about old youtube poor and there was a sort of discoloration thing going on. Not to mention megavideo has an odd policy that you can only watch 72 minutes of video at any given time so I had to wait 54 minutes before I could watch the last 20 or so minute of Push.
Overall, I liked it. Doubt it's gonna win any awards but they handled the powers nicely and the action scenes were pretty damned good. Same kinda vaguely comicbook related genre that Jumper did, can't wait to see the next single word title film like this, and for the most part the abilities displayed are psi in nature.
Vaguely kinda reminded me of Scanners too.
As stated before, this seems to be a fairly small number of abilities that're psi related; for the layman, powers of the mind. With 1 notable exception.
...and this past Sunday I saw Push on megavideo.com, though it remains on my rental list because whoever recorded the thing cut off all the subtitles for the Cantonese speaking parts. Video quality was about old youtube poor and there was a sort of discoloration thing going on. Not to mention megavideo has an odd policy that you can only watch 72 minutes of video at any given time so I had to wait 54 minutes before I could watch the last 20 or so minute of Push.
Overall, I liked it. Doubt it's gonna win any awards but they handled the powers nicely and the action scenes were pretty damned good. Same kinda vaguely comicbook related genre that Jumper did, can't wait to see the next single word title film like this, and for the most part the abilities displayed are psi in nature.
Vaguely kinda reminded me of Scanners too.
As stated before, this seems to be a fairly small number of abilities that're psi related; for the layman, powers of the mind. With 1 notable exception.
- Psychokinetics: While not everyone holds to this, there's a difference between being able to read a mind (telepathy) and being able to alter the content. Somewhere along the way I got it into my head that similar to telekinetics, who move stuff, psychokinetics can actually manipulate the mind. Referred to as 'pushers' in the film, there's only 2 of them, their eyes tend to either pulse black or fill out with it entirely as the rewrite the minds of others.
- Precognitives: People that can see the future and, in this case, display that by drawing it. This isn't as limited in scope to juse the series Heroes as some of you might think. In the real world the CIA did a lot of experimenting with this sort of thing under the heading of 'remote viewing' and there are psychics that use it as well. There's also 2 of these in the film, though another is alluded to that we never see.
- Ilusion: Limited in scope how it's displayed here, actually kinda reminds me more of the 'pusher' from The X·Files than anything else, but the ability makes others see what the user wants them to. The guy in this seems able to only hold these illusions for a brief amount of time and only to relatively small objects. All the cash in his wallet is blank pieces of paper with the denominations written on them in black ink.
- Telekinetics: Simply, the ability to move things around them by simply concentrating on them. There are 2 (popular number) of them in this film and possibly one other but I was a bit fuzzy on what one of their father's power. They're both very powerful but one of them doesn't seem to realize it as his power periodically spikes.
- Sonics: The possible exception. At a stretch I was thinking they might be psi·screamers but generally those don't have the ability to effect anything in the physical world. Generally displayed here as people screaming and it practically shattering everything in the path of the sound. Also seems to be able to focus it to directly mush a person's brain.
- Screeners: Couldn't think of what else to call this. There's also 2 of these here, basically they seem to have the ability to block out the powers of the precogs to a relatively limited zone. Possibly they could block other things but this is all they give us here.
- ?: Not sure how to classify this one. Seen the ability before but I can't remember where. It's a variation on psychokinesis, this guy doesn't so much manipulate the mind as he does delete memories. Oh, right...Heroes. Though in that case the Haitian literally manipulates the mind, hence the observed bruising on Claire's mother's brain.