As the tagline reads – “Maybe you’ll become bulletproof. Maybe you’ll turn invisible. Maybe you’ll explode. Whatever happens, this pill will change everything.” – Yah, I’m excited to give Project Power a chance. The movie that is, but maybe the pill as well. The pill sounds like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans for superpowers. And if Project Power is half as good as the other superhero movie from Netflix a month ago, The Old Guard, it’ll be terrific.
A drug has flooded the streets of New Orleans with the ability to give its takers superhuman abilities that wear off in five minutes. Street-cop, with a killer Clint Eastwood impression, Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is not above taking the pill himself, if it means doing some good for his community. His superior officer points him in the direction of The Major (Jamie Foxx), believed to hold some information behind the influx of drugs. But The Major has also just kidnapped Robin Reilly (Dominique Fishback), a friend of Shaver and a local drug dealer, and is looking into the source behind the pills himself. Project Power is co-directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.
Are we prepared to accept this as our Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Nightwing movie? I reckon you could fill in the backstory, that as a rookie cop, Bruce Wayne left John Blake with his Batcave full of tech, but seeing how Blake thinks he saw Batman get blown up as a masked vigilante, he decides to transfer to New Orleans, change his name to Frank Shaver, and protect this city using his advantages as a regular policeman. John Blake and Shaver are cut from the same noble cloth, and sure do look the same, that’s all I’m saying. Of course, I’m referring to John Blake, Gordon-Levitt’s character in The Dark Knight Rises, where we all thought director Christopher Nolan was setting up to further the Batman franchise with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It may not be the Nightwing story we deserve, but it’s what we got right now. We genuinely do have a new Robin in Project Power, called Robin, and wearing a hoodie so reminiscent to the original bright Robin costume that it can’t be a coincidence. The Major even says that he and Robin ain’t no stand-ins for Batman and Robin, but they totally are. Robin hasn’t got a daddy, and latches on to The Major wearing an “Adopt” t-shirt from the Vet. There’s so much artificial red light used throughout Project Power that it reminded me of Gotham City in Batman & Robin as well. This Robin isn’t an acrobat, but she raps every chance she gets… an acrobat of the word, perhaps? Robin has gone from the trapeze, to spitting dope breeze!
Project Power works well off the strength of its neat characterisations. The Major and Robin form an unlikely tight kinship, especially after The Major fully threatened to kill her mother after locking Robin in the boot of his car; heavy. It’s a typical relationship that forms from both Robin and The Major realising they need something from the other person and growing a mutual respect; it’s done well. Robin and Shaver’s friendship is a little stranger, as I don’t know how this mature street cop would take a shine to this little drug dealer, to the point where he’s giving her a beat-up motorcycles… unless Shaver has taken an interest in protecting the fatherless children of the city well before Robin entered the drug game, because he was an orphan, and like the teachings of Batman, he feels an obligation to… oh, we ended up here again. Shaver protecting Robin’s mother by coming out of the bathroom like he’d just had a shower is probably one of the coolest tricks I’ve seen in a movie all year, so big kudos to that. I even thought Tracy (Kyanna Simone Simpson) was a cool character, even though she is hardly in the movie at all.
The other massive advantage this movie has going for it is the set of superpowers on show. It had me worried in the beginning, that the movie was talking a lot about what the pill could do, but there was no quick movement to show us its full potential – this had me wondering, is this movie on a small budget and is it going to hold it back? But not to worry, soon enough, the CGI kicks in and characters are flaming-on and hulking-out, just to name a few of the many awesome abilities to come from this pill. My favourite user was probably the camouflaging bank robber, bouncing around the city streets. But then there’s when Shaver gets shot in the head too; ah, it’s all cool, it’s a cool pill.
Unfortunately, the plot of Project Power isn’t going to amp your igloo. The third act is a bit of a snoozer. At one point, The Major discovers that the proprietors of this pill are tracking everyone who takes it, like lab-rats – but that idea doesn’t really go anywhere, with the movie most occupied in a rescue mission aboard a boat. The bad guys in this movie, are just a bunch of suits, that have something that, the good guys want back. The movie is called Project Power, but we don’t get to delve into the diabolical scheme of the project. I thought it was interesting to show The Major’s backstory in flashbacks that congeal with the present – his daughter and he were involved in a car accident, and sometimes his daughter and the car appear where they shouldn’t be. The idea of a regular father getting tangled up in a superhero plot, just wanting to rescue his daughter, is something I will take out of Project Power too; there’s an interesting allegory for drug addiction and mutation that could be explored further as well.
Lastly, I like Machine Gun Kelly – I just thought you should know. He’s popped up in small roles here and there (Nerve, Bird Box, The King of Staten Island), playing a douchebag or street-level player and he’s always believable.
Project Power might’ve made a better short series, where time between the characters and the action could have been spaced out a bit more with a thicker plot. Like a skinny carcass of a majestic beast, there’s barely enough meat on this to make it something great. But I do want one of those black t-shirts that say ‘Adopt’ with the puppy print. The Major is a badass; he wears it briefly, right before donning a red jacket, just to remind us that Jamie Foxx was a badass in Baby Driver as well.
3.0
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