Project Power

This review may contain spoilers!

Sometimes you get a sharp reminder that 'original streaming service film' can mean the same thing as what we used to call a 'direct to DVD/Blu-ray film'. I would give Project Power a 2.5/10.

Project Power takes us to a world in which people can take a drug to get a random superpower for five minutes. This drug is flooding the streets of New Orleans like wildfire and ties together our three protagonists, a pill-popping cop, an underage dealer and a drifter searching for his daughter. The first act of Project Power is where the strength of it lies; the introductions to a superhero world that is a little different and promises a blend of gangster-crime feature. We get to see how a superhuman drug works on the streets, how street culture reacts to it and how the police/crime element shifts sharply to such a violent new chemical at play.

The best performance came from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played Frank. I liked this character because he had some degrees of complexity to him that I thought were quite well explored. Gordon-Levitt presents a charismatic police officer who tends to operate in a very morally grey way, taking the same Power drug the criminals he's pursuing are. I liked watching the lengths this character would go to do what's right for the people of New Orleans, he gives all characters he encounters an equally fair measure and stands as one of the more noble figures in the feature. I also enjoyed seeing how Gordon-Levitt played to his character relying on the drug to protect and serve, his need for Power in order to combat Power is one of the more compelling conflicts in the film.

Project Power rushes before it even finishes laying down the groundwork, we barely establish the Power drug scene before we're catapulted into the main protagonist's story. The main character for this film is an underage drug dealer who pushes the Power product, chiefly selling to protagonist cop: Frank. This main character, Robin, is a really loose binding thread between all the storylines and characters in the feature but it's often hard to understand what purpose she serves. Her whole role is warped between being a hardass drug dealer, a genuine good human being, a wannabe rapper and a downright nervous individual. She seems to be torn between what the film needs her to be and what the creators of the film want her to represent and they never find a nice point in which these things meld together. Likewise the introduction of Art/The Major is very frustrating. He enters the film in true action movie fashion, all stunts and little dialogue. It takes a very long time for us to have any idea of Art's purpose in the film or what even motivates him as a character, but by delaying this information the feature feels more and more like a hollow action piece. Once we get the big reveal that the Power drug is a government experiment being used on the New Orleans populace and that Art's daughter is one of the sources of the drug then the film really takes a convoluted turn for the worst. The film becomes more and more about poorly constructed action scenes being slogged through in order to save the kid and tear down this really vague government threat. The cinematography for the film felt like someone trying their best to make a cool looking film without any idea how to keep to a consistent style, it was like watching a music video in which there's a lot of showy visuals but the style isn't very complex. The visual effects for the film were horrendous with some of the worst CGI I've had to struggle through in a while, the film spends a lot of the time cutting away or using camerawork to hide visual effects shots. The score for the film was pretty tame and never amped up the action, the soundtrack also had quite a toned down style and boasted some pretty unappealing hip-hop.

Jamie Foxx, who played Art, is a surprisingly bland protagonist for this film; Foxx is so obsessed with playing to this monotonous, yet cool tone that you don't really feel like his role has any emotional range. Dominique Fishback, who played Robin, was a character I really struggled to see the point of; Fishback's intermittent rapping felt like a really forced aspect of the story that never added anything to the plot or her character. Rodrigo Santoro, who played Biggie, really oversold his role as the supplier of drug product; the way he is constantly selling or grandstanding feels melodramatic to the extreme. Courtney B. Vance, who played Captain Craine, looks bored to be in this feature; he lacks subtlety and the big reveal around his role's true intentions comes as no surprise. Amy Landecker, who played Gardner, was the worst of the antagonists we had thrown our way; Landecker is poised as the big final villain but she comes across as stoic and emotionless which undercuts the significance of her role. Machine Gun Kelly, who played Newt, has been diminished in the types of roles he plays for a while now; this role is one of the blink and you'll miss it special effects characters that appears in quite a forgettable scene. Kyanna Simone Simpson, who played Tracy, really plays to the stereotype of captive daughter; a lot of grateful tears at getting 'rescued' but no real connection between her or Foxx to sell it. Rose Bianco, who played Matriarch, seemed a little overwhelmed with the scenes in which she portrayed a buyer for the Power drug; Bianco almost seemed to shrink away from the tough role she had to portray.