Project Power is a new spin on the superhero genre and was released on Netflix this weekend (14th August 2020) the movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt,Jamie Foxx and Dominique Fishback.
The movie follows Frank (Levitt) a New Orleans police officer who is investigating a new drug on the street called ‘Power’ which when ingested instantly gives the user a random superpower for 5 whole minutes. Frank teams up with a Power Dealer ,Robin (Fishback) to find where the supply is coming from. Whilst all this is going on Art (Foxx) is trying to find his missing daughter who seems to be connected to the whole Power Project.
I hadn’t seen a trailer or anything for the movie, i just noticed it in the top ten in the UK list on my Netflix account, and the premise alone was enough for me to give it a watch, along with me constantly looking for new things to watch to keep me sane through quarantine.
The cast is great, Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon Levitt as always are great to watch, and Dominique Fishback was great with her role as teenager dealer and sidekick despite being almost 30 she pulled it off pretty well. However a few clunky lines of dialogue and terrible jokes are strewn throughout this movie, hindering the characters ever so slightly which leads to inconsistent character writing. For example Frank is clearly an amazing police officer and proves he can quickly think on his feet to get out of sticky situations, however they give him jokes (most of which if i mention will spoil the movie) but in one situation he runs out of a door and then Robin shouts “Hey frank wrong way” then he goes “Yeah i know” and runs back and it just doesn’t fit with the character the movie spends most of his screen time establishing, its nothing film ruining but nowadays it seems every character in a movie has to be a wisecrack for some reason…The movie Venom is a perfect example of this.
As well as being inconsistent with characters the powers also have its inconsistencies, for example: The 3rd act of the film explains that the powers are designed from natural Animals abilities such as Octopus camo,regrow limbs like lizards, or hard skin like a Armadillo some of which we see (a character becomes bullet proof and you see his skin harden up and it looks like a Armadillo skin.) Yet some people have powers that no animal on earth could have such as bursting into flames or just blowing up into a gory mass…or even becoming some sort of cave troll? It’s just doesn’t make sense because what they establish in the movie is then contradicted by plot points involving Arts daughter.
This movie was directed by two people Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost who also directed the Movie ‘Nerve’ but until i did the research on this movie i didn’t know that but whilst watching Project Power i said to my partner “Hey, the way this is filmed reminds me of the movie Nerve” which isn’t a negative its just clear to see they have a set style and clearly took inspiration from their last directing attempts. And this movie is really competently made. The action scenes are great, the special effects are also amazing to watch (except one, No Spoilers) and watching people use super powers, some of which I haven’t seen before, were a lot of fun to watch.
This however is where Project Power has its biggest problem it doesn’t embrace the amazing premise. We hear more about the superpowers that people have over expositional call logs to police departments and eye witness interviews on radio shows rather than just showing us what we want to see. Though what the movie does show us is really cool i just wish Project Power just went all out and gave us a bonkers over the top movie, something given its premise, it could easily get away with.
Final Score.
Title:Okay
Project Power has some amazing visuals and despite having an amazing idea to put a unique spin on the superhero genre, inconsistent writing for both characters and plot leaves this feeling a little muddled and makes me wish they would have gone a little more bonkers with the premise making this ‘okay’ rather than great.
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