...To Make a Long Story Short...

Push has all the makings of a great, fun, movie but fails to coalesce into anything more than a triumph of mediocrity.  Like two grandmaster chess players staring down each other for the game of the century; only to have them throw chess pieces at each other once it begins.

Push starts off with a solid cast of actors; Chris Evans (see him in Sunshine if you don't believe me), Dakota Fanning, Cliff Curtis and Dijmon Hounsou to name a few. Its mythos, one of government agencies cultivating people with psychic gifts (so called Pushers, Movers, Bleeders, etc) to use against one another in a "cold war", has enough juice to make for an interesting new franchise. And the claustrophobic metropolis of modern day Hong Kong, gives the movie a colorful and rich backdrop.

The problem is that the writer, David Bourla, seems to be completely out of his league in making anything truly great out of those components. 

The choice of leader/shot caller in the movie was off. Dakota Fanning's character would have made more sense as a leader of the group of renegades (if not the movie) than Chris Evans'.  Many of the characters abilities seem to arbitrarily grow and/or shrink in effectiveness; Evans' character specifically goes from nearly unable to "move" a pair of dice to deflecting bullets in the course of a day without explanation.  Characters inexplicable relationships with one another prior to the movie are never clarified. And, presumably to set things up for a sequel, much of the events that culminate in the final scene are left open.   

Overall the movie is good at a base line level.  Visually it's a joy but not one for the history books.