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A sinister government agency known as “The Division” has been tracking down and rounding up those with mental powers for decades in an effort to harness their abilities and turn them into the most powerful army in history. Trouble is, no one with abilities has managed to survive their trials. Telekinetic Nick (Chris Evans) has been hiding out in Hong Kong ever since the Division murdered his father a decade earlier, but one day he is sought out by teenaged clairvoyant Cassie (Dakota Fanning) who needs his help to track down a briefcase with 6 million dollars in it. The two team up with Kira (Camilla Belle), an escapee of the Division who has the ability to influence other’s thoughts and actions, but they must contend with both an evil family of gangsters with abilities of their own and sinister Division agent Henry Carver (Djimon Hounsou) in their pursuit of the briefcase.

Paul McGuigan’s (Lucky Number Slevin) Push is elevated by the occasional good idea or scene, but brought down by a rapid descent into convolution and mediocrity. As long as word of the film has been around, Push has been compared to X-men comics and the television show Heroes, and with good reason. But the film is also a bit more of a mash-up than that; its probably best described as X-men meets the Bourne films with a heavy influence of film noir on top. The latter two are unexpected, as in not necessarily the most obvious ways to realize the story, and do a lot to help the film rise above its relatively unoriginal origins. Although its Bourne style up close, shaky cam action is already almost a cliché by this point, it’s also pretty darn cool to see telekinetic fights realized this way. The exotic locale of Hong Kong isn’t the first place that comes to mind for a setting, but its otherness certainly works to the film’s advantage. And the film noir is even more unexpected, popping up in several ways; there’s femme fatales aplenty, a hero who is continually getting unrealistically knocked around as the running time progresses, and a unique ‘mental power twist’ on the film noir convention of knowing the story’s unhappy ending from the outset.

These touches and flourishes are subtle, nothing explicit or distracting - but they do somewhat elevate the quality of a film that is otherwise rife with missteps and forgettable elements. The style of the film is very, for lack of a better word, stylish – but it also seemed to be trying very hard to be stylish. As far as the performances go, Chris Evans is (as always) likeable, but everyone else is merely serviceable. The storyline is simple enough at the set up - particularly considering we are dropped right into a world populated with a myriad of different mental abilities that aren’t always clearly explained - but gets unnecessarily complicated by the end. Some of the mental powers are flat out confusing in terms of understanding how they work, which isn’t too big a problem at first but becomes an issue when the climax hinges on their usage. And even without the abilities, the finale is less a smoothly unfolding culmination of events and something more akin to a harsh collision of story elements.

Push reminded me a lot of the recent action hit Wanted; both movies are more than a little derivative, and both seem to be part of a trend that sees films take cool concepts and coast on them rather than focusing on crafting the tightest and best story possible. We are in an age of cinema where a lot of fantastical things can be believably realized with not a lot of money – but that doesn’t mean the story shouldn’t be strong. There’s some cool ideas, some cool effects and some cool  film noir and neo-action film touches, but in general Push just isn’t solid or consistent.

- Jeff Latta