Main cast: Jamie Foxx (Art Reilly), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Frank Shaver), Dominique Fishback (Robin), Kyanna Simone Simpson (Tracy Reilly), Colson Baker (Newt), Rodrigo Santoro (Biggie), Tait Fletcher (Wallace), Amy Landecker (Dr Gardner), and Courtney B Vance (Captain Crane)
Directors: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Okay, the synopsis of the plot can be a quite complicated, so let me start from the beginning.
Project Power is a reference to a plot by the Teleios company, your usual amoral Big Pharma type that wants to make a lot of money out of a drug creatively called Power. When you take Power, it triggers a genetic mutation that either gives you an X-Man type of superpower for five minutes, or the mutation is so extreme that it kills you, usually with a messy splatter. Different people unlocks a different superpower, and you need to keep taking Power to play your own superhero. Teleios can’t test it officially, so they basically give out the drug to the dealers in New Orleans for free, so that the drug gets sold with a tracker included in each capsule. The latter allows the corporation to track how well the drug does in real life.
Art Reilly is a former soldier that wants to find out the identity the top dog of Teleios, take down the company, and get back his daughter Tracy, whom they have kidnapped. Art is one of the first generation test subjects that were subjected to the experiments that later gave rise to Power, and when his daughter was born, she displayed a superpower without having to go through the steps Art was put through. Hence, her kidnapping, as the company wants to run a lot of tests on the poor girl.
Meanwhile, the cop Frank Shaver becomes frustrated when the city is overrun by criminals with superpowers, and against his superior Captain Crane’s orders, he starts purchasing Power on the side from high school student Robin in order to give himself a fighting chance against the criminals. What do you know, his superpower is becoming bulletproof—just what a cop needs, heh.
These characters’ paths cross when Art tracks down a dealer, Newt, and the resulting confrontation sees Newt dead and Art in possession of the man’s phone. As it happens, Newt is Robin’s cousin, and she happens to text him when the phone is in Art’s possession. Hence, Art kidnaps her to find out what she knows. Frank tries to track Robin down and of course, these three end up being partners and allies for the grand showdown.
Now, what exactly a movie is Project Power? Like the recent The Old Guard, this one is more like an action fantasy for adults. Sure, there are some people running around with powers and some mixed-bag CGI too, but the characters’ morality makes this one a movie more for grown-ups. Art kills without hesitation or remorse to get his way, and while Frank may seem like a noble cop at heart, he buys drugs off a high school girl and has no problems with how the end justifies the means, any means. Robin is dealing drugs because she needs money badly for her mother’s medical bills, but she also doesn’t display conventional morality. These aren’t the usual superhero movie leads, in other words, with lots of shades of grey between them when it comes to their lawful to true neutral ways.
Jamie Foxx isn’t breaking any new grounds here, but he is slipping comfortably into the silent, gruff action hero mode with a softer side that he shows only to the very few that are close to him. I also have to say, he is smoking hot in this movie. That scene of him taking off his shirt and changing into a fresh one is definitely a gift to folks that like to look at hot guys, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also easy on the eyes as well. How on earth did the latter go from boyish squeaky clean blandness to this level of manly man hotness? Dominique Fishback has the thankless task of playing the sassy and feisty black young lady stereotype, but she also pulls off what could have been an annoying role very well instead. All in all, the performances of the lead members of the cast are solid, and that is a good thing because the plot is actually mediocre.
The movie is actually made up of familiar tropes, with twists and turns that can be seen coming away because of how clichéd the movie can be. The villains are one-note and remain in the background for so long that there is nothing interesting or memorable about them at all. Also, the action scenes could have been done better. Fight scenes are frequently obfuscated by camera angles or quick cuts, maybe because after paying the CGI guys the people behind this movie can’t afford a proper choreographer for those scenes.
The biggest problem, though, is the abrupt tonal shift of the movie as it hurtles past its one-hour mark. The first half or so of the movie is pretty grim and even bleak at times, as it touches somewhat superficially on a few social and economic issues gripping certain sections of the US population these days, but the second half is all about the wisecracks, jokes, and one-liners often delivered like someone had spliced rejected scenes from Marvel or DC superhero movies together. The fight scenes at the penultimate moments in the second half are anticlimactic, actually, and I feel that the stronger first half or so of this movie is way too good to be stuck with the lame second half.
I have an unexpectedly good time watching Project Power, mostly due to the performance of the main cast and their chemistry with one another, but if they decided to do a sequel, I can only hope that they get some choreographers to come up with really good fight scenes to deliver the epic showdowns that we all deserve in the later parts of the movie.
