FILM I ACTION
Why ‘Project Power’ is an Enjoyable Disaster
How Jamie Foxx’s smile and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Dirty Harry imitation make this action flick fun.
“If there was a pill that could give you five minutes of pure power would you take it?” — sounds the question in Project Power’s trailer to trigger our curiosity.
Well, my answer is this: only if I could have Jamie Foxx’s smile and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Dirty Harry imitation. For five minutes, I want to have each of these to be able to say yes to a thick paycheck that probably they’ve been offered to play the easiest and dumbest roles in their careers.
Also, I would like to carry out an investigation on how Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the directors of the unforgettable Paranormal Activity 3 and 4, were able to acquire a competent individual’s phone number from the film industry who landed them a Netflix deal with Foxx and Levitt in the leading roles. I would make a 90-minute-long documentary out of it, which explains thoroughly how such deals are made in Hollywood. Trust me, everybody would want to see it.
“A punchy, likable trio of performances are the point of this superhero action-thriller with energy to burn.” — Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Netflix’s new action-sci-fi hybrid is bad, like B-movie bad, with an A-movie budget. It’s like Ghost Rider meets 2003-Hulk to go and have a drink with a villain from a Fast & Furious episode. Are you able to visualize that picture I just painted? If not, this nonsense action-thriller will help you to get there.
The plot is a disaster that you can’t take your eyes off. (Author’s note: I told my girlfriend, who suggested watching this movie, that if the first twenty minutes is as crap as I expect, I will NOT finish it). So the first twenty minutes is downright awful, but for some reason, I just let it roll. And guess what? I was kind of having fun. Foxx and Levitt play along so vividly with this dumb-as-hell concept that it actually becomes entertaining.
A rollercoaster ride of good and bad CGI, soapy character drama, and funny one-liners mixed within a lot of action sequences. They reminded me of an age when I had the time to watch every single action movie that was available on VHS. This film would’ve been among them.
Project power is about a pill that you take, and it gives you a random superpower for five minutes. When this substance hits the streets of New Orleans, junkies and criminals go mad to get it. Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) also likes to use them, although he’s a cop, if it helps criminals, then it helps him to catch them, too. It’s pure logic. His dealer and informant Robin (Dominique Fishback from The Deuce) gets in trouble while she distributes the drug on the streets and soon ends up under the trunk of a pickup truck driven by Art (Jamie Foxx), an ex-soldier who wants to take down the people who created the pills and abducted his daughter.
The film is almost as wild of a concept as to watch Machine Gun Kelly act in it. It’s a mixture of superhero story clichés that I’d rate as “So-Bad-It’s-Good”, which is also a cliché trope to use these days, but it fits perfectly.
Project Power’s pace is rapid and only slows down to let the viewer breathe for a second or two. It’s a trick to not let us think about the plot for too long because that would damage the experience. The less you think about it is for the better because not many things make sense in this 2-hour-long insanity. The biggest compliment I can make is that it’s confusing, ridiculous, and entertaining at the same time. Brain-dead action films tend to work like that.
Without the trio (Foxx, Levitt, and Fishback) this “piece of art” would be a straight-to-DVD monstrosity that’s quickly forgotten. However, the actors’ coolness and attitude make it clear that they were having so much fun shooting this feature, and that tends to be contagious, fortunately for its audience.