Paul McGuigan, the Scottish-born director of the upcoming SF thriller film Push, previewed several scenes for reporters on Oct. 24 and detailed his philosophy for the movie, which emphasizes a real-world location (Hong Kong), handheld camerawork and cinema verite style.
"It's sharp, but it's messy," McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) told a group of reporters at an editing suite in North Hollywood, Calif. "We shot it all in on handheld cameras. And the idea was to try and show a real environment, you know? Like to try to make it feel very real, rather than to try to create our own environment, like a green-screen environment."
Push stars Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) and Dakota Fanning as fugitives hiding in Hong Kong from a top-secret government "Division," which is hunting them for their special abilities: Evans' Nick is a "mover," i.e., a telekinetic; Fanning's Cassie is a teen "watcher," or clairvoyant. Together, they seek out Kira (Camilla Belle), a "pusher," or someone who can plant false memories and manipulate the mind. All are pursued by the Division's Carver (Djimon Hounsou) and his sidekick, Victor (Neil Jackson).
The first clip McGuigan showed was the movie's title sequence, cobbled together from stock footage of government experiments and new footage of the characters, over which Fanning's voice-over (as Cassie) explains why they are running and what the Division wants: To capture the people with special abilities and turn them into human weapons. "We don't ask to be special," Cassie says. "We just are."
In a second scene, Nick is at home in his tiny apartment when two Division agents--"sniffers," or people who can see the history of an object by smelling it--arrive to interrogate Nick. The sequence was notable for its depiction of "sniffing": When a character smells Nick's cup, the viewer sees a speeded-up montage of scenes from the cup's point of view: Being drunk out of, being placed on a table, being dropped on the floor.
They leave, and Nick begins to pack his bags, pausing to levitate a pistol above his hand. The phone rings: It's Cassie at the front door. She asks to be let in and tells Nick to put the gun away. Nick has never met Cassie, but she has foreseen this moment. Cassie is a punked-out street girl with a pink streak in her long blond hair--a different look for the now adolescent Fanning. Cassie wants to rescue her mother, who has been abducted by the Division, and has foreseen that Nick is the key.
In a third scene, the two sniffer agents have captured Kira and are escorting her into a coffee bar, where she wants to go to the bathroom. One agent takes her into the bathroom, and she puts the whammy on him. She tells him that he had a brother, that he was murdered, and that he knows who killed his brother: the agent in the other room. We see the images being implanted into his head. He leaves the bathroom, goes into the coffee bar and shoots the other agent dead.
Realizing in horror what's just happened, the agent goes back into the bathroom, and he and Kira fight. Kira wins.
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Nick (Chris Evans) and Cassie (Dakota Fanning) encounter Kira (Camilla Belle, right) in Push.
In a subsequent scene, we see Cassie and Nick in a cab. Nick tries to levitate Cassie's book. "Lame," she says: You've got to work on your skills if we're going to change anything. And, oh, by the way, she says. We're going to die before all of this is over.
Next scene: The agent who lost Kira is explaining himself to Carver and Victor. As they walk along an alley, Carver tells the agent he can no longer trust what's in his own mind. Yes, I can, he insists. Fine, says Carver. If you think you can, put your gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. You already checked, and it's not loaded. But Carver is also a pusher: He alters the a gent's memories. The agent puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Of course, it's loaded.
The next scene: Nick has run afoul of "bleeders," people with the ability to cause massive internal bleeding. He's lying face down on a table in a small Chinese temple. Cassie's with him. A woman--a "stitcher," or healer, played by Maggie Siff--appears. Your mother once did me a favor, she tells Cassie. The stitcher places her hands on Nick's bruised, battered back. He writhes. Walls rattle, lights flash. And he's healed.
We see a scene in which Cassie, who has become drunk in order to extend her ability to see the future, rails at Nick, Kira and a fourth person, Hook, a "shadow," or someone who can mask their location from sniffers and watchers.
The final scenes involved heavy action. Nick approaches Victor and Carver in a Chinese restaurant, levitating guns and pointing them directly at Victor's and Carver's heads. But he doesn't anticipate Victor's own "mover" abilities. Victor easily gains control of the pistols, firing them remotely with his mind. When Nick tries to turn the pistols on Victor, Victor throws up a mental "shield" to block the bullets. Nick discovers he also has the ability, but it's not enough: With the wave of a hand, Victor is able to pick Nick up, throw him against the walls and smash him against the ceiling. The effect is very convincing: McGuigan says the levitating stunts were all done on set, with a stuntman cabled to smash into the walls in real time.
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The final scene we screened that day was one of the climactic battles in the movie. It takes place outdoors at night at a construction site for a high-rise building, girders covered in bamboo scaffolding. It's a running gun battle between what appear to be Chinese mobsters, Victor, Nick and Kira. Victor levitates and tosses Chinese mobsters through the air and into bamboo scaffolding. Kira fires a machine gun as she runs up stairs. Nick, initially trapped in the trunk of a car, gets free and engages in mano-a-mano fighting with Victor, their blows enhanced by "mover" power, which appears as waves of air or sound accompanied by a pulse noise. The action is frenetic, loud and swirling.
Push opens Feb. 6, 2009 in the US.
