What Do The Critics Say

"Absolutely derivative, but nonetheless of interest, Paul McGuigan’s Push provides enough of a variation on the oversaturated superhero genre to feel fresh on a moment to moment basis. Push makes excellent usage of its busy Hong Kong setting. A sci-fi spectacle in which the pyrotechnics take a backseat to such things as the reflections of neon lights in a car’s window and the gaudy glitz of a high-rise casino, the movie has its own distinctive, lived-in style. As tempting as it is to rave more, overselling Push would do it no favors." Jeremy Heilman MOVIE MARTYR "The film is likable, but not lovable. All of the pushing can't compete with other sci-fi thrillers. Still, it's worth the ride if you keep an open mind for the unrealistic." Clay Cane BET "One of the better recent attempts at cashing in on the superhero film craze without having an actual comic book to adapt." Jim Vejvoda ING MOVIES "It's not great, but it's a perfectly fine version of psychics on the run versus the bad guys." Fred Topel CAN MAGAZINE "The charmingly good-looking Evans (Fantastic Four), too, makes the most of his reluctant hero, a guy with a bigger chip on his shoulder than he’d like to admit. Other standout turns include Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond) as The Division’s No. 1 badass, a top-notch Pusher who can put any old thought in your head. Pure escapist fun." Kit Bowen HOLLYWOOD.COM "Don't be fooled by the ads: "Push" isn't any kind of superhero action blowout, but more of a Hong Kong crime drama.The best thing about the movie is that you can never predict exactly where it's going. The characters here are more X-Men than everymen. The scene where Fanning's character gets drunk on cheap booze in hopes of increasing her psychic powers, though? Priceless." Luke Y Thompson E! ONLINE

"What really struck me more than the plot itself was McGuigan's amazing use of location and space; it feels as if this movie and these characters are really living in Hong Kong. We see genuine city textures and vivid, palpable cityscapes. Moreover, this feeling extends into the rest of the movie." Jeffrey M. Anderson COMBUSTIBLE CELLULOID "Though ostensibly action sci-fi, McGuigan's film pushes the boundaries of genre, playing out its paranormal parameters like a game of multi-dimensional chess." Anton Bitel CHANNEL 4 FILM "Evans once again demonstrates why he should be a bigger star, with a perfectly calibrated mix of heroic enthusiasm and cynical detachment. Kinetic and convincing, this uses a limited budget to thrilling effect, giving us a sort of X-Men meets Trainspotting twist. We hope a sequel follows this early promise." Helen OHara EMPIRE MAGAZINE "Stylishly silly but oddly cool all the same. Frenetic genre action with great special-effects." Mark Adams UK DAILY MIRROR The thrust of the plot concentrates on Chris Evans' Nick (who can use his telekinetic skills to win at any dice game) and Dakota Fanning's Cassie, who is a Watcher (who predicts the future by sketching on little art boards), who team up to try and find a suitcase supposedly containing a lot of money. Peter Sova's cinematography of Hong Kong is inspiring (the streets, the bustle, the harbour at night) and the direction excellent." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE

The Inside Story The premise of "Push", a world in which ordinary people capable of astonishing acts are tested and controlled by a secretive government agency, stirred director Paul McGuigan’s curiosity and sent him to the Internet for more information. "I typed in 'Psychic Powers Experiments'. Out comes this amazing stuff. It’s 1949 and the Cold War is about to begin. People are starting to experiment on what the brain can do. Dual 2006 Milan International Film Festival winner McGuigan ("Lucky Number Slevin") learned that in the years immediately following World War II, the idea of the use of psychics for information gathering began to take hold in government circles in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. "Think about it," says Glenn Williamson, producer of "Push" and president of Back Lot Pictures. "You have someone who can truly see the future or manipulate the thoughts of others. It's a great counterintelligence asset. The movie is very much rooted in those real experiments. The files are still pretty confidential, so I don't know how much of what really happened we will ever know. The darkest part was during Nazi Germany, but more recently, during the Cold War, both Soviet and American intelligence conducted experiments with people who appeared to have these abilities." In "Push", a very sinister government agency hunts down people with special abilities in an attempt to harness those powers for its own benefit. "The Division is the organization in charge of monitoring people with paranormal abilities," says Williamson ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"). "But they've taken things to the next level and try to control and manipulate them." The filmmakers believe the reality behind the movie’s story sets it apart from other films revolving around superheroes. "We wanted to tell a fantastical story in a way that makes it feel very real," says McGuigan ("Gangster No. 1"). "I liked the idea of bringing this whole world of people with extraordinary powers to life. But the film is not about supernatural powers. It’s about natural powers: things that people could actually do. For example, there are documented cases of people who do what they call 'remote viewing'. They would fly people over, say, the American Embassy and these people could get a sense of the building’s layout and they could tell you which room is used for what." With that knowledge, it became essential to McGuigan that the characters seemed to be real people in a real world. "I want people to be able to emotionally connect to it. We have all the big effects, but to me, that’s only a little bit of it. It is an action movie, but it’s much more based on the characterizations than action films usually are." "There's a real story that revolves around Nick and how he turned his back on the world," Williamson ("The Omen") adds. "Cassie is the character that gets him out of it and it becomes a real human relationship. It's a great ride, but it's filled with human connection, which I think the best movies have. It's filled with unexpected situations and real drama." One of the decisions McGuigan made that helped keep the focus on the film’s characters was to use CGI effects sparingly. "I didn’t want to do it in green screen or blue screen," he said. "I wanted to do it for real, through the camera. You can learn a lot from the great filmmakers of the past. They didn’t have the benefit of CGI. They just used their imagination. In the end, the only thing on green screen is people driving, because the traffic in Hong Kong doesn’t move much." Actor Chris Evans, found the premise of the script fascinating. "When I first read it, I believed it all," he Evans ("Fantastic 4") says. "Paul and I went back and forth on a daily basis searching for a truth level for the movie. He kept reminding me that there has to be some suspension of belief and that it’s okay just to let the audience go for a ride with us." The filmmakers have created a world that closely resembles the one we all live in, but with a few new rules of its own. "There are a lot of great moments in the movie where you're just not sure what's going on," Williamson stated. "Dakota Fanning’s character can see images of the future. Her images are critical to what is happening, but they aren’t crystal-clear and they may be unreliable, like memories. We want the world of "Push" to be our world, but with a heightened visual style. So it's our world, but not our world." The film’s young star, three time Young Artist Award winner Dakota Fanning (2002, '06 & '09) characterizes Push as an action film, but adds, "It's so much of a personal story. I hope people think it's really fun. It's very action-packed and fast-moving, and the visual part of it is amazing." "We're not sending any deep messages. This is a pure entertainment film, like a lot of my favorite movies. It has a great script, great action and great characters, so it’s fun all around," says Evans (Sunshine and "Street Kings"). "Push" gives its four leading actors an extraordinary opportunity to step out of their comfort zones and into roles unlike any audiences have seen them in before. For example: Dakota Fanning transitions from child star to a full-fledged teenage actress; Djimon Hounsou portrays his first villain and, instead of a damsel in distress, Camilla Belle plays a lethal weapon. Chris Evans found himself on a complex emotional journey. "Nick has had a lot of people whom he loved leave him for reasons he can't answer. And that has led him to build walls. There are lot of surprise turns and twists in the story. It's like a page-turner. Some people are clairvoyant. Some people are can transform the appearance of everyday objects. Nick is a mover, which is a telekinetic." McGuigan had seen Evans in the award-winning sci-fi film "Sunshine". "I was so impressed by his commitment to that part. And I liked his realness. Even though he’s a good-looking guy, he still feels very real to me." "Chris has exactly what the part needed," says Williamson. "He not only embraced the physical part, he had the time of his life. Our stuntman was actually a little frustrated, because he didn’t get to do as much as he rehearsed for." McGuigan sees the film as a chance for Fanning to grow up finally in the eyes of both the audience and the industry. "he’s still the sweet little girl from "War of the Worlds" to a lot of people. It’s her time to go through her fourteen year old phase, where she gets to be a bit badly behaved." "Dakota is an incredible actor," says Williamson. "She understands nuance." Fanning modestly responds, "I become the character when they say action, and when they say cut, it's over. I think it might come from doing it since I was so young." "Push" gave Fanning a chance to work with one of her favorite actresses, Camilla Belle ("The Patriot" & "10,000 BC"). Belle, whose acting career started when she was nine months old, admits: "I see a lot of myself in Dakota. Neither of us studied acting. We learned by doing it. On the other hand, she has this magical way of goofing around and then being there full of emotion once the camera starts rolling." The air of mystery was one of the things that attracted Belle to her part. Belle calls McGuigan "the calmest director I'd ever worked with in my entire life. He just always keeps his cool. He’s really eccentric, and fun, and so open to anything you want to talk about, anything. And he's the most fashionable director I've ever worked with as well. Djimon and I were just making fun of him because everything is so coordinated. He always has his little hat and his iPod in his pocket and his Starbucks." Two-time Academy Award nominee Djimon Hounsou ("Blood Diamond" & "In America"), has built an internationally acclaimed career with portrayals of stoic, valiant characters. At six foot three, Hounsou cuts an imposing figure, a fact not lost on his fellow actors. "It’s great seeing him in that character and he really fills those shoes," says Evans. "Just his presence alone is huge. He's got this big frame and this booming voice: and that gaze." "I’ve never really thought about him as either bad or good," says McGuigan. "We don’t use him as a moustache twisting bad guy; we use him as a kind of more intellectual bad guy." Hounsou revealed he relished the opportunity to unleash his inner scoundrel. "I like playing a bad guy, especially one whose bad attitude is justified. You can be a little malicious." A fascinating fusion of Imperial China, Colonial Britain and futuristic metropolis, Hong Kong was chosen as the setting for "Push" after the filmmakers scouted multiple locations. Stan Wlodkowski, the film’s unit production manager and one of its executive producers says the film "was always scripted to take place in a large Asian city, but not necessarily Hong Kong. We looked at Bangkok, some cities in mainland China and Hong Kong. Hong Kong had the locations that worked for Paul’s vision of the movie." "What we had in mind was something like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca," McGuigan explained. "In the 1930s and '40s, Casablanca was full of rogues of all kinds. It was a great place to hide out because anyone could go there. They could hide away and nobody could ever touch them. We had to find our Casablanca." Five time Genie Award winning Production Designer François Séguin, says that for him all of Asia and especially China is a visual treasure. "It's just so beautiful, so intense and so rich. They're not afraid of using color anywhere, so we had a totally free hand with that. In a Western or Occidental movie, the palette has to be a little bit more restrained because that's what it is in life. But here, it's totally open. I'd worked with Paul on Lucky Number Slevin and I knew his vision and his style." None of the cast had been to Hong Kong before. "It was a shocker," says Hounsou. "I mean, all I did all day was look up. It's one of the centers of business in the world. It's exciting to see how one can come here and completely be lost." "Hong Kong, it's a character in itself," says Evans. "There really is a life to the city, and it lends itself to the style we’re going for in this movie." Fanning was enthralled by what she calls "the contrast between the future and a thousand years ago. When you step off the plane and you feel the hot air, you know you're in a different part of the world. The skyscrapers are huge and really modern and look like the future. And then the tiny fishing villages and fish markets were kind of very primitive and not like anything I’ve seen before." "There are certain streets where the neon’s incredible," says Williamson. "When we shot in those areas, Peter Sova, the director of photography, would sometimes decide to shoot without any added light, to capture that real-life feeling. Paul has given it his own stylistic imprint. The palette of the movie, what the characters are wearing, it's all a heightened version of reality." The Verdict "There's a lot to take in and a lot to try and comprehend when it comes to "Push". There are Movers, Watchers, Pushers, Stitches, Sniffs, Shadows, Bleeders, Shifts and Wipers. And in "Push", you'll experience the telekinetic abilities these colorful characters possess. The bustling, neon-lit, Hong Kong is the setting for "Push". In it's own right, Hong Kong is a star. It is also the ideal place for those who are on the run from the Division, to hide out in. Director Paul McGuigan used what he calls "guerilla type filmmaking" for much of the film. That meant sending the cast into the bustling streets and then filming in one take. On other occassions he used concealed cameras on camera trucks, filming through little holes. Editing the bustling, crowded, Hong Kong streetscape shots, would have resulted in a total loss of continuity. By using these tactics, McGuigan has added depth to the feeling that it's all happening in 'real-time': here and now. "Push" is a sci-fi, action thriller, that works reasonably well. Interesting characters, plenty of gritty action, some awesome telekineticpowers, an asian style shootout on a construction site and, an ending that leaves itself open to a sequel. Pretty entertaining, "Push" is one of those films that would be easy to overlook. Sci-Fi Fans will enjoy it. WALA. 3 1/2 STARS." Synopsis

Telekinesis. Clairvoyance. Telepathy. For decades, governments around the globe have investigated the possibility of using paranormal abilities as highly effective, covert weapons against their enemies and, their friends. In 1945, the Nazis launched the first effort to develop psychic warriors. Soon after, the Soviets and the Americans began to conduct their own top-secret research programs, including the CIA’s notorious MKUltra mind control experiments, to develop paranormal operatives, the ultimate tool for undetectable surveillance. Now, a shadowy government agency known as the Division is rounding up psychics for experiments designed to boost their powers and assemble the most commanding army the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, almost no one has ever survived these trials. Nick Gant, a second-generation telekinetic, has been in hiding since he witnessed the murder of his father by the Division, more than a decade earlier. He's found sanctuary in densely populated Hong Kong. But for how long?

Who Plays Who?

Chris Evans Colin Ford Joel Gretsch Djimon Hounsou Dakota Fanning Ming-Na Nate Mooney Maggie Siff Robert Tsonos Brandon Rhea Camilla Belle Neil Jackson Kai Cheung Leung Corey Stoll Scott Michael Campbell

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Nick Gant Young Nick Nick's Father Henry Carver Cassie Holmes Emily Hu Pinky Stein Teresa Stowe Division Doctor #1 Division Doctor #2 Kira Hollis Victor Budarin Dice Man Agent Mack Agent Holden

The Production Team

Director Written by Producers Original Music D.O.P. Film Editor Casting Production Designer Art Direction Set Decoration Costume Designers

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Paul McGuigan David Bourla Bruce Davey/William Vince/Glenn Williamson Neil Davidge Peter Sova Nicolas Trembasiewicz Deborah Aquila & Mary Tricia Wood François Séguin Second Chan Jeffrey Kong Laura Goldsmith & Nina Proctor

Run Time 111 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2009 - Icon Film Distribution - All Rights Reserved ©1999-2009 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian & International Copyright. Trademark Laws Apply.