In “Project Power,” a new supercharged, high-concept Netflix film and oblique run at the superhero genre; 1) disposable black and brown people in New Orleans are used as guinea pigs for a new experimental street drug that gives users unpredictable and fleeting superpowers for five minutes; 2) a sympathetic cop uses those same narcotics to “level the playing field” in a city riddled with crime and corrupt superiors who pass on amplified bad guys to secretive feds or men in black without accountability; 3) a white teacher tries to humiliate a black student who also moonlights as a teenaged street dealer by night; 4 Marvin Gaye songs play on the soundtrack to indicate the everyday struggle is real for BIPOC.
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This is all to say, the screenplay, by Mattson Tomlin (co-writer of Matt Reeves’ upcoming ‘Batman’ film, FYI), features a lot of relevant social texture and has a lot on its mind about, not only heroism, race, and inequity, but the very concept of power, who owns it, who wields it, its inequality, its distribution and all that it says about our rigged society that favors the affluent and powerful who often skirt scrutiny and responsibility thanks to wealth. Rich stuff, right?
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Alas, as directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (“Catfish”)—all style and concept, seemingly interested in the superficial, and never really embracing the socioeconomic texture threaded through the story— “Project Power” is rendered pretty ineffectual and shallow, as if young MTV music video directors from a two decades ago got ahold of the script and slathered it with music and gimmicky visuals. One understands that movies need to entertain too—at least of this ilk and budget—but given everything that the script serves up, the artificial and largely hollow end product feels like a big missed opportunity.
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In “Project Power” three souls are on a collision course of destiny as the streets of New Orleans are flooded with a new mystery “Power” drug that gives users volatile and erratic powers for five minutes. One man is bulletproof, another adopting chameleon powers, but another (Machine Gun Kelly), bursts into flames and ultimately explodes from his scuzzy douchebaggery (how fitting).
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Two of the three points are already connected: the teenage power pusher and aspiring rapper (Dominique Fishback) and the white police officer/one good man trope (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, basically playing a version of the hardnosed cop he played in “The Dark Knight Rises“) who cops these drugs to fight back enhanced crime. There’s also the initially mysterious Frank (Jamie Foxx), an ex-soldier with his own secretive personal vendetta against those peddling these narcotics. Eventually, after much clashing and the misdirection of Foxx perhaps being the bad guy of the film, the trio reluctantly join forces and hunt for the source behind these dangerous new street pills.
But the film quickly goes south from here, a typically noisy, violent, dull and flashy attempt at a smash and grab and getting to the nasty Grand Puba’s behind these experimental drugs and their master plan. Not only do all the interesting social elements of the film fade into the background, but the filmmakers don’t help. Joost and Schulman—who also directed the similarly slick and wannabe edgy, but ultimately empty “Nerve”—always place a premium on amphetamine-addled kineticism and visual gloss, desperate to communicate how cool and badass it is. This makes for some dynamic action sequences—they’ve progressed leaps and bounds since “Catfish” that’s for sure— and sometimes dazzling VFX (perhaps the best flame on visuals that have never yet appeared in a “Fantastic Four” movie), but always cheapens the human struggle that’s supposed to be at the heart of the movie.
Through Fishback’s teen, “Project Power” confronts the idea of the hustle: asserting your own voice and power, outmaneuvering the powers that be holding you down, not asking for permission and becoming your own superpower. Jamie Foxx plays a good father figure here—and he is really overloaded with charisma no matter the material— and again there is some good stuff here about working the system harder than it works you busting through limitations and manifesting ambition. But it gets hokey at times and even the thoughtful script sometimes fumbles things through on-the-nose clunky dialogue and or clumsy exposition.
“Project Power” arrives at a very needed moment and tries to deconstruct or reconceive the superhero film for the 21st century and or our very modern age of Black Lives Matter concerns, police corruption, Trumpian moral decay, and notions—as our elections come under siege from within the country— that everything is rigged and set up for us to lose. But all of this becomes either becomes over-heavy handed and overblown or lost in the swirl of thermodynamic super her action, to not to mention a corny ending that’s just an over-the-top supernova of melodrama.
Tomlin has some intriguing ideas here, but they sometimes don’t feel fully baked and or, need filmmakers who might interrogate them and collaborate with deeper complexity and intention. To that end, the notion of this screenwriter teaming up with Matt Reeves for “The Batman” could yield some excellent results, but “Project Power,” especially from these “Catfish” and “Paranormal Activity” filmmakers ultimately feels like a big let down— a captivating idea about the way the system preys on the disadvantaged and the constant exploitation and appropriation of black and brown voices, that fizzles out fast once the high of its concept wears off. [C-]
