THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Salt
The Expendables
The Last Airbender
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
Amer
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Paul McGuigan. Starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle, Djimon Hounsou, Maggie Siff and Scott Michael Campbell. Sci-Fi/Thriller, USA, 111 min. Web Site

As if being responsible for HELLBOY and THE UNBORN wasn’t enough! Further down the Third Reich corridors marked ‘Occult/Genetic Experiments’ comes the PUSH brigade; people with paranormal abilities being developed into psychic warriors.

What the Nazis began other governments continued to expand in codified secret. Soon a whole army of Movers, Wipers, Watchers, Pushers, Sniffers, Bleeders, Whatevers with extraordinary gifts – telekinesis, telepathy, instant healing – are aimlessly roaming the world trying to live normal lives while a shadowy agency attempts to mobilize them as covert weaponry. One such group of second generation extrasensory ex-pats who live in Hong Kong band together to fight this clandestine corporation and change their future. If director Paul (LUCKY NUMBER SLEVIN) McGuigan’s sci-fi thriller sounds a lot like ‘Heroes’, well, that’s because it really does. It even manages to match the virtual impenetrability of that TV series last season with much the same result trajectory – initial intrigue, growing puzzlement, dawning realization plot, logic and motivation are non-existent, brain switch-off because who cares. “Nothing we do makes sense” says Mover Chris Evans to Watcher Dakota Fanning and never a truer word gets spoken in this implausible jumble of ugly looking action sequences deconstructed from other movies. The opening stolen wholesale from FIRESTARTER starts the tedium off as it means to go on, riffing on far better genre entries towards the hilariously cartoon skyscraper roof construction climax. Human Torch Evans leads another not-quite-so-FANTASTIC FOUR acting ensemble. Pusher Camilla Belle is so blank you can’t believe her third act character twist at all. Sinister agent Djimon Hounsou overdoes the sinister so you are in no doubt he’s a nasty piece of work with no redeeming features. As for Dakota Fanning, wearing boots, mini-skirt, swearing and getting drunk, what happened? One minute she’s CHARLOTTE’S WEB sweetness and light, the next she’s conjuring up memories of Jodie Foster in TAXI DRIVER! Best performance comes from ever-dependable Kiwi actor Cliff Curtis playing a Shifter who can change the appearance of any object. Okay, the super-screaming action chase, causing fish to explode in an aquarium market, is quite fun; so too is the para-kinetic gun duel with weapons floating and firing off all over a Chinese restaurant.

But when PUSH comes to shove, it isn’t much of anything out of the ordinary, feeling very much like a pilot for a TV show we’ve already seen. And any Watcher worth his/her salt should have predicted that.

Alan Jones

© London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2009
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