Push is a movie about Nick (Chris Evans), a man who lives in perpetual fear of the US version of Division, a worldwide agency of major governments whose goal is to train psychic soldiers. To aid this, Division injects psychics with a drug to boost their abilities. Only one person, Kira (Camilla Belle), has been able to survive this drug, and she quickly escapes after taking the drug. Nick meets Cassie (Dakota Fanning), a snarky 13-year old who can see the future. Together, they track down Kira and a stolen syringe which contains the serum with the hope that finding it will help them bring down Division.The movie was poorly received at the box office and by critics, getting a paltry 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It made a little over $31 million, not counting overseas and DVD sales, so a sequel is unlikely given that it had an estimated budget of $38 million. There is a television series in development being written by David Hayter, but the lack of recent news means it has likely fallen into Development Hell, which is a damn shame.For the 1996 novel of the same name that was made into the 2009 movie Precious, click here.
This movie provides examples of:
Badass - The fact is, Victor was simply destroying everything, and if the Divison already has him on their team it does not look like they even need the drug. Of course, if they made him even more super...well, then it just stops being fair. Nick also has his moments, though, and was giving Victor a run for his money near the end.
Badass Family: The Chinese Triad we meet features a family of two make that three Bleeders and a skilled Watcher.
The Chessmaster - Both Cassie and the Pop Girl are constantly trying to prove that they're the best chessmaster in the film. Little do they know that they're really just fighting for second place. The real chessmaster is Cassie's mom. See Gambit Roulette below.
Possibly Nick as well, as he was the one who came up with the idea of using notes and mind-wipes. He also wrote all the notes, not showing them to anyone until the right time.
Click Hello - Pop Girl clicks off the safety right behind Cassie near the end.
Competence Zone - Averted. The parents are all far more powerful and skilled at using their powers than the younger psychics.
Covers Always Lie - You see the poster on this page, where Nick telekinetically sweeps through a whole street, throwing cars and such? Yeah, that never happens. Not even close.
Deadly Upgrade - The serum has killed every test subject, save Kira.
Deadpan Snarker - Cassie is chock full of these, and Nick has his occasional moments.
Cassie:(having just drawn a picture of her, Nick, and her mother, all dead) You better do something quick, 'cause I'm getting sick of drawing dead bodies.
The entire movie was one gigantic one by Cassie's mother to get the serum into the hands of her daughter. Cassie jokes that her mom must've been planning this since before Cassie was born. Knowing that, she's probably right.
Nick's letters can be considered this, especially the one of he and Kira at Coney Island at the end. This is justified by them having dated for quite some time, and by having someone who can see the future on their side.
Instant Expert - Nick has been a Mover all his life, and he sucks at it at the beginning, barely able to roll some dice. Once it becomes plot important, he suddenly get great at it. It is implied, though, that he had a lot of raw talent, and he just needed more practice or motivation. He's usually surprised when he does something fairly powerful, and he almost always does so after seeing someone else do them (such as Victor and his bullet shields and telekinetic-enhanced punches). He's also consistently a lot better at the big, uncontrolled stuff (i.e., brute force) than he is at the little, fiddly (read: precision) things.
Karmic Death - Nick stays his hand and doesn't kill Victor, who is killed anyway three seconds later by a Bleeder.
Averted when Kira kills Carver in a fairly sadistic way.
Mêlée à Trois - Nick, Cassie and friends vs the Chinese Triad vs Division
Memory Gambit- Tack on some Omniscient Morality License and you essentially have a non-traceable future, since Watchers work off of everyone's hypothetical plans.
Mind Rape - Remember that time your best friend killed your brother? No? Well, you do now.
Mutant Draft Board - present, but unclear. It's not made sure if Division just registers and tracks all psychics, or if it makes them actively work for Division, whether they want to or not.
Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Neither Djimon Hounsou (from Benin) nor Cliff Curtis (from New Zealand) even bothers to try to sound like Americans. It could be that Division is an international organization (Carver does say near the end that he's working specifically for the US), or that the two were recruited from their respective countries to the US, but it's never specified.
Shifters are Masters Of Illusion, allowing them to morph any object of their choice, though it seems the object does have to be of the same relative size of the object it's being shifted to, and it's temporary.
Stitchers have Healing Hands, albeit very painful, and capable of working in reverse.
Sniffers can see where any object has every been and who's used it. They get their name from how their ability works: literally by sniffing the object in a form of psychometry.
Watchers predict the future - or at least, the future that one intends to take. They can be countered by not knowing what you're going to do until right before you do it, and having your memories erased can stop them dead in their tracks.
Shadows can hide people by "shadowing" an object from them, allowing their subject to not be found. They are generally used to cancel out Sniffers. Extremely powerful ones can cancel out Watchers, though there's only one known occurrence of this.
Scary Black Man - Carver. He's played by Djimon Honsou, what do you expect?
Screw Gun Safety - Some would say that if you're a telekinetic who's not very good at it, you would take extra care to make sure that the pistols you are levitating are not pointed at you when you work the slide.
Shoot the Dog: The Chinese Triad leader killing Victor before Nick has to.
Shout Out - Mind control being described as "pushing" someone was first used in Stephen King's Firestarter, although as the power works here it's more evocative of a drug dealer "pushing".
Slo Mo - A dramatic walk down a hallway. Verges on Narm.
Strong As They Need To Be - Nick starts off a relatively unskilled Mover; his encounters with the much-stronger and infinitely more Badass Victor seem to boost his competency via Awesomeness by Analysis to the point that in their final battle, he's enough of a match to overpower him to nearly beat him to death.
Super Serum - The MacGuffin of the plot; Division is testing it on psychics to enhance their powers. It's failed so far in every case, save one.
Xanatos Speed Chess - Once Nick and Cassie realize how they can shut down Pop Girl, things change very quickly, especially when the letters come into play.
You Have Failed Me - Carver "pushes" one of his agents to shoot himself for letting Kira escape and killing his partner (Kira's "push"). Carver was willing to let it slide until the agent started claiming that there is no way he can be "pushed" again.
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