Mark Reviews Movies: PROJECT POWER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 13, 2020

Everything about Project Power is bland and generic—from its premise, to its characters, to its action, to its visual effects, to its final suggestion that the filmmakers really want to make a franchise of this conceit. That last one might not be a bad idea. This movie does so little with its central gimmick that there's only untapped potential remaining.

The core idea is the existence of a pill that gives a person a unique superpower for exactly five minutes—well, give or take a minute or two in movie time, depending on the requirements of any given action sequence. There's an explanation for this, and it's something to do with tapping into a human being's genetic potential. Since every lifeform on the planet is evolved from a more-than-ancient common ancestor, somewhere in human DNA are the hidden remnants of at least some other animal.

The pill unleashes that or something, and the results are that one person might become bulletproof and another might increase in mass, transforming into a hulking monster. The bulletproof thing is kind of plausible, but someone's going to have to explain which animal can spontaneously generate mass, defying multiple laws of biology and basic physics.

The most likely explanation, of course, is that screenwriter Mattson Tomlin remembered that other superheroes and supervillains have been capable of doing this in comics and movies, so established rules of the movie and life be damned, why shouldn't the characters here be able to do the same? On a more fundamental level, we're left wondering who in his or her right mind would ingest a pill that glows with radiation—brighter when the capsule is twisted like a switch. A lot can happen in five minutes, of course, but one imagines the half-life of whatever's in this pill is significantly longer.

A story like this needs something to distract us from the inconsistences and implausibility of its setup, especially if said story is trying to invent a more or less realistic explanation for its fantastical elements. This one definitely doesn't possess anything like that, so we're just left to ponder the story's silliness, formulaic trappings, and lack of imagination.

The plot focuses on three characters, all of whom seem developed by a committee with a good knowledge of clichés. Our main hero is Art (Jamie Foxx), a former soldier who was one of the military's early test subjects for the gene-altering substance. His daughter was kidnapped by unknown, sinister forces, and Art is tracking the supply chain of the pill into New Orleans, hoping to find the people who abducted her.

Robin (Dominique Fishback) is a teenage girl, struggling in school and forced to sell the pill on the streets to make money for her grandmother's medical bills. She also wants to become a rapper, and that's about the end of her characterization and development.

The teen is on the good side of Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a rebellious cop who is fed up with how many of his fellow officers are being injured or killed by people using the pill to commit crimes. Frank decides to try the pill himself in order to stop a bank robber (the first obvious instance of the movie's inconsistent tracking of how long the pill lasts), and that gets him in trouble with his captain (played by Courtney B. Vance, in a glorified cameo). To earn back his badge and gun (Yes, there's that scene where the rogue cop has to turn them in), Frank has to hunt down the pill's main supplier. The captain says it's Art.

It's basically a long chase, as our heroes chase each other, each believing the other is somehow involved in the big conspiracy to bring the pill to the city, and then team up to chase the real bad guys. Various shootouts and showdowns occur, such as Art battling a local dealer who becomes engulfed in flames when he takes the pill (It genuinely feels as if the explanation for what the pill does was devised after all of the big action scenes were planned) or a bloody gunfight, shot from within a foggy glass container. Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman seem more concerned with obfuscating the lackluster effects than taking advantage of the potential of super-powered combat.

Beyond how little thought there is behind the movie's gimmick and what could be done with it, there's nothing especially incompetent about Project Power. There's also nothing at all special, clever, or particularly effective about it, either.

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