Push Comes to Shove

Oasis (Duplicity) delivers a cookie-cutter urban drama that, while long on crime, violence, betrayals, and melodrama, is unfortunately short on coherence and logic. Greg "GP" Patterson is a family man and aspiring comic book artist who struggles to get by and isn't opposed to the occasional light crime to help make ends meet, but with his comic book dreams going nowhere and his luck getting harder—including a repo man who repossesses just about everything he owns and a trumped-up assault case that has his family separated—he hooks up with a friend to hustle money quickly to get his family back, only to unwittingly put them further in danger. Genre staples abound, but the characters are far from consistent or believable, while implausibilities (what are the odds of stumbling upon the mayor smoking crack with hookers?) and an unruly structure that ping-pongs between points of view and various overheated plot lines overpower the potentially entertaining cautionary tale at the center. (Mar.)
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A fast-paced tale of greed—_Push Comes to Shove _examines the pitfalls and struggles that an honest family faces to survive the perils of financial woes.

The bills are due again for Greg “GP” Patterson, but this time, they won’t get paid. He and his wife are facing robbery charges when a simple assault they committed goes bad. After a few days in jail, the Pattersons lose everything they own and risk losing their children forever.

Luckily Aunty Jewels bails the Pattersons out, but GP must make some serious moves if he is to provide decent shelter for his family again. A visit to Squeeze, a villainous loan shark, leads to killer interest rates and a murderous default penalty. Nevertheless, GP accepts the terms.

When GP gives Jewels the loan money to flip in a high-stakes credit card scheme, she gets robbed for every single dime. Now GP has to figure out how to pay his debt and gain the respect of his family again, but in the meantime, Jewels has already figured out how to make everybody pay.

An entertaining, multicultural drama, Push Comes to Shove is a cautionary tale for today’s economically fraught times.