The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Constant flickers
‘Project Power’ has some things going for it, but twist on superhero genre burns out
“Project Power” boasts a couple of big names in Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, benefits from a nice performance from the lesser-known but talented Dominique Fishback and offers a decent twist on the superhero genre. ¶ Well, that’s about where the reasons for watching this new action-heavy Netflix entry — about an illegal pill that gives its user a unique superpower, for a short time and only if it doesn’t instantly kill him or her — end. ¶ With its scattershot direction, overdone editing and unfocused storytelling, “Project Power” fails to have the impact it could have.
Set in New Orleans and taking place mainly over the course of one day and night, “Project Power” starts slightly earlier, with a mysterious man called Biggie (Roberto Santoro of “Westworld”) offering would-be dealers a bunch of the pills at no cost to sell in the city. One of the dealers, Newt (rapper and Cleveland native Machine Gun Kelly) remarks that it sounds too good to be true but takes his share.
Sometime later, high school student Robin (Fishback) also is pushing the pills. When a sale to three street toughs goes wrong, she is rescued by Frank (Gordon-Levitt), a New Orleans police officer who not only looks after her but is a buyer, as well. Frank feels like the city police are losing the battle to criminals taking the pills and is trying to even the odds.
The other major player is Art (Foxx), aka “The Major,” a vigilante tracing the trail of the pills up to the power players, believing them to have his daughter (for reasons that will be revealed). Art has a not-so-friendly encounter with Newt early on in “Project Power,” and things get literally hot.
While Art soon enlists an initially reluctant Robin to help him, Frank is told by his captain (Courtney B. Vance of the new HBO series “Lovecraft Country”) that Art is the source of all the city’s pills and must be brought to justice. (This is only after Frank is caught using the drug and his superior makes an off-thebooks arrangement with him.)
Various fight scenes lead us, eventually, to a coming together of Frank and Art and a resulting uneasy partnership, with Robin in tow to help watch their backs as they take on the entirely forgettable bad guys.
Not that there’s anything truly special here, but the acting by the three leads is a bright spot of “Project Power.” Gordon-Levitt (“7500”) gets the least amount of screentime but is enjoyable in his scenes. Foxx (“Just Mercy”) is a larger player in the affair, and he adds a bit of needed juice to “Project Power.”
Really, though, the movie belongs to Fishback (“The
Deuce,” “The Hate U Give”), whose Robin is struggling to take care of her mother and aspires to be a rapper. What may be the movie’s best sequence — if nothing else it’s a welcome contrast to all the bombast — has Robin impressing the initially doubting Art of her freestyle rhyming skills. (The filmmakers recruited 23-year-old rap artist Chika to pen Robin’s clever performances.)
Speaking of the filmmakers, co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (“Nerve,” “Catfish”) do some nice things, but not enough to make “Project Power” engaging. The film keeps you at arm’s length with an assault of jump cuts, suggesting, perhaps, a rushed shoot for which they tried to compensate in editing. (Also, the film has this harsh look that could be an artistic choice or could be a result of limited resources.)
While his script is uneven, newcomer Mattson Tomlin shows promise. And he’s credited with cowriting “The Batman” — director Matt Reeves’ nowslated-for-2021 Caped Crusader adventure — with Reeves, so he’s clearly impressed some people since starting to script “Project Power” in a coffee shop in 2016.
If you’re bored and looking to kill a couple of hours with some semi-mindless action, by all means take a dose of “Project Power.” Side effects may include mild boredom, but it shouldn’t prove instantly fatal.