'Project Power' Review
R: Violence, bloody images, drug content and some language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 52 Minutes
Production Companies: Screen Arcade, Supermarche
Distributor: Netflix
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Writers: Mattson Tomlin
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback, Machine Gun Kelly, Rodrigo Santoro, Amy Landecker, Casey Neistat, Courtney B. Vance
Release Date: August 14, 2020
On the streets of New Orleans, word begins to spread about a mysterious new pill that unlocks superpowers unique to each user. The catch: You don't know what will happen until you take it. While some develop bulletproof skin, invisibility, and super strength, others exhibit a deadlier reaction. But when the pill escalates crime within the city to dangerous levels, a local cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) teams with a teenage dealer (Dominique Fishback) and a former soldier fueled by a secret vendetta (Jamie Foxx) to fight power with power and risk taking the pill in order to track down and stop the group responsible for creating it.
Man, those Catfish guys have truly come into their own, haven’t they? To think that, 10 years ago, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman burst onto the scene with a documentary. Now they direct narrative projects that showcase their range as filmmakers, especially within the action genre. They know the basics of what makes a fun, fast-paced thriller and can work with whatever budget they’re given. Project Power is the highest-budgeted film they’ve worked on to date and — like their previous film, Nerve — they show how skilled they are at delivering exciting, high-octane action.
The action itself is the best part of Project Power. Despite its plot, which I’ll get to later, most of the action set pieces are exhilarating. Granted, they peak at the beginning with an elaborate chase sequence where Jamie Foxx’s character, The Major, pursues a fiery, superpowered Machine Gun Kelly through an apartment building. The editing is sloppy at times, but the level of creativity is strong enough to compensate. The film is also elevated by its slick VFX that, as far as superhero movies go, can rival that of an X-Men movie.
The world of Project Power has an enticing set-up. The film doesn’t necessarily build up its world, but it sets just the right amount of rules needed to buy into it. In a world where pills give you a power-up that makes you damn near invincible for a brief amount of time, criminals seek this power for their own selfish needs. However, getting addicted to the pills will fuck you up.
The performances by the main cast are decent. Jamie Foxx channels his inner Charles Bronson and delivers a charismatic, yet tough-as-nails, performance as a man set to rescue his daughter from the drug lords that took her. Joseph Gordon-Levitt does the best he can as the troped renegade cop on a mission, but despite that character’s archetype, he is the most fun to watch. Most of the movie felt like a battle of charisma between Foxx and Gordon-Levitt.
Here’s the thing about Project Power that severely irks me: While the direction is fun and exciting, it doesn’t compensate for the weak, tone-deaf screenplay by Mattson Tomlin, who is currently a co-writer on the upcoming The Batman. Project Power is generic and depicts excruciating racial stereotypes that we’re trying to move away from. The film focuses on a teenage girl named Robin, a low-income Black drug dealer struggling in school who dreams of becoming a rapper.
While the actress portraying her, Dominique Fishback, is talented and can spit some sick bars, it doesn’t negate the fact that this archetype is projecting a negative image of Black people that is still prevalent in Hollywood. It doesn’t help that she has a professional partnership with the renegade White cop (Frank), who is framed to be the main hero of the story, for he disobeys the law and does things his way! Yup, nothing problematic about that.
If the poor Black drug dealer/wannabe rapper and the White rule-breaking cop aren’t enough, the film also has an angry Black captain and drug lords who are all –– and I bet you didn’t expect this –– Latino! There’s no easy way to say this, but I can’t get invested in a world where people can have superhuman abilities, yet are confined to those stereotypical racial roles. I get that this film wants to have an early-2000s superhero movie aesthetic, but we’re in 2020. We’ve moved on from those poor depictions and seeing all of the racial cliches is a huge detriment to the story overall. Project Power has a back-and-forth struggle with itself as it shows glimpses of originality, but it’s constantly bogged down by a generic plot that limits the potential of the superhuman world it sets up.
No matter what sympathy cards the film deals, I couldn’t care less for any of the characters because they’re all unlikeable people, especially Jamie Foxx’s character, The Major/Art. Did you note the Charles Bronson name-drop earlier? Art is literally on his Death Wish purge where this ordinary guy goes on a murder spree to rescue his daughter. When worlds collide, Art straight up kidnaps Robin and threatens to kill her entire family. This is a grown man searching for his child, but ends up kidnapping… wait for it… a child in the same age range. And of course, cops are nowhere to be found (the ones that aren’t essential to the plot, that is).
Man, I just couldn’t enjoy this movie at all. It’s so lackluster in its execution despite the potential of its enticing premise. It felt like something Max Landis would write. Hell, I’d personally put this in the same bucket as Bright.
Rating: 2/5 | 49%
