HEY, gang! Let’s go line up overnight so we can be the first to nab tickets to the new Dakota Fanning action movie.
Li’l Fanning plays a girl who can see the future in “Push,” a grubby cut-price sci-fi thriller. In the flick, the sinister government “Division” is chasing powerful freaks such as “pushers,” who can plant any idea in another’s mind (including the idea that he should kill himself, a thought that may also occur to anyone who wastes 12 bucks on this flick).
“Watchers” such as the Fanning character can see what’s about to happen, while “movers” such as a Hong Kong refugee (Chris Evans) from the Division can move objects without touching them. The Evans character’s girlfriend (Camilla Belle) is a pusher who is also running from such Division spooks as “sniffs” who spend lots of time (I’m not kidding) smelling toothbrushes for clues.
There is also a group of villains whose superpower is to holler loud enough to shatter glass and generally ruin everything. Maybe they should be called “critics”?
All of this futuristic Philip K. Shtick leads to a frantic but meaningless clot of action scenes in which the superpowered face off. These supposed highlights make “Fantastic Four” look like “Seven Samurai.”
Several times, the movers shakily point guns that wobble through the air as though being guided by puppet strings, but how difficult is it to hold and fire a pistol? These guys are super-lazy, and I was super-bored. Anyway, if one telekinetic tried to attack another, wouldn’t they just cancel each other out? Not here: Whichever one the story wants to win at that moment simply wins, without explanation.
Fanning, whose character is 13 but who sports a thigh-high miniskirt and do-me boots, spends the movie rattling off exposition and telling Evans what happens next. Whenever she has a vision of the future, she draws a sketch of the scene that’s about to occur while mouthing would-be Humphrey Bogart lines like, “You better do something quick because I’m getting sick of drawing dead bodies.” Toughness, thy name is Dakota Fanning.
PUSH ESPuh-leeze. Running time: 121 minutes. Rated PG-13 (action violence, profanity, smoking, teen drinking). At the Empire, the 84th Street, the Union Square, others.