Paul McGuigan may not possess any superpowers himself. But his ability to create a stunning fantasy thriller on a fraction of the budget of other blockbusters is still a pretty impressive feat. Push sees a group of psychic-powered people (Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning and Camilla Belle) on the run from a sinister government agency in Hong Kong – think Heroes meets The Bourne Identity. McGuigan speaks to Bryan Cairns about fish tanks, fights and flying guns.

Your previous movies Lucky Number Slevin and Gangster No. 1 took a fairly realistic approach to fight scenes. Would you say that’s the case with Push too?

Yeah. We do have fight sequences that are a bit out of the ordinary with guns hovering in the air - they can be moved by telekinetic powers. But I did what I normally do, which is surround myself with the best people I possibly can and then take all the credit for it (laughs). I had Nick Powell as the stunt co-ordinator and he did the Bourne movies. He was really into the hand-to-hand combat and I was into making it real. All the film was shot hand-held so we were able to get in there and make something look cool and practical.

We also had Chris Evans, who was really intricate in getting beat up and kicked around. He was great, and it really helps when your lead actor wants to get involved.

In all my movies before, I’ve tried to make it in your face and this is very much the same type. I didn’t want this operatic sense of people flying in the air like ballet dancers; I wanted them to be thrown against walls. We had stuntmen that really get hurt, and not because I wanted them to get hurt, but just because of the type of scenes we were doing. They knew they were safe doing it, but they were getting thrown into walls really fast. There’s not one shot in this film that was sped up so what you see is what we shot. It’s nice to do it through the camera rather than with CGI.

Push is your biggest action movie to date…

Yes – I mean Slevin didn’t have any action in it at all; it just felt like it did. We shot a few guns off but there was nothing choreographed like Push. I’ve never had a fight co-ordinator before, but this was so much fun. Whenever you get to make a movie like this, it’s generally like being a kid. You go to work thinking, “What do I have to do again? Float guns in the air and pretend they are being fired? How fun!”

With that kind of learning curve, was there a sequence that really tested you?

The sequences where they are running and there are fish tanks everywhere. In Hong Kong, if you go into a place and buy fish, they are all alive. The whole market sequence was really hard because when you start blowing things up, you don’t know what is going to happen. And fish tanks are expensive and heavy. We had eight cameras going for this whole fish tank scene and I said to Chris and Dakota, “You know what would be really good? If you guys actually do this stunt yourselves.” And they just went “Okay.” Under my breath, I was like “Really?” They actually did this stunt themselves and ran through the fish market with all these fish tanks exploding!

The idea was they were being chased by these people that emit a high pitch noise and are trying to knock them out. Obviously, that noise blows up the tanks as well. We went to meeting after meeting, storyboarded everything, and shot every angle. When you are doing something like that, anything could happen because you are doing it for real. That’s the first action sequence I’ve ever done in my career. It was amazing! I was like, “Let’s blow something else up!”

Iron Man and The Dark Knight had over $100 million to play with, yet Push was made for a much more modest amount…

We only had about $28 million which is really nothing. Like everything, you have to be inventive. I came from a background of European cinema where you had nothing, so you get creative with very little cash. For me, $28 million was a lot of money! It’s like “Great! We can blow up the Empire State Building now!”

I had a larger sense of how far the money could go. In a way, that allows me to make decisions that normally people would say “we can’t afford this!" But the studio said,"if you can find a way of doing it in the time, then we’ll do whatever you want.” The studio, Summit, was offering me as much as they could. We never thought small but always went big.

Push opens in UK cinemas on 23rd February 2009 and is out now in US cinemas.