Project Power movie review: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s superhero film ends Netflix’s action movie hot-streak | Hollywood - Hindustan Times
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Project Power movie review: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s superhero film ends Netflix’s action movie hot-streak

Hindustan Times | ByRohan Naahar
Aug 15, 2020 01:11 PM IST

Project Power movie review: Boasting a big budget and even bigger stars, Netflix’s new film, featuring Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, ends the streamer’s action movie hot-streak.

Project Power
Directors - Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
Cast - Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback, Rodrigo Santoro

Project Power movie review: Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a still from Netflix’s new action film.(Skip Bolen/Netflix)
Project Power movie review: Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a still from Netflix’s new action film.(Skip Bolen/Netflix)

The coolest insider gossip I remember reading about directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman came immediately after their debut film, the documentary Catfish, premiered at Sundance and inspired a heated bidding war. This was a decade ago. The director duo were reportedly summoned to the offices of Paramount Pictures, and were offered the gig to make an upcoming franchise film, on the condition that they admit that Catfish was, in fact, a fake documentary.

Joost and Schulman, who have now adopted the considerably chiller credit ‘Henry and Rel’, maintain to this day that the events shown in Catfish, an incredible story of online fraud, really happened. They were reported to have stood their ground in that Paramount meeting. The franchise film they were being offered was Paranormal Activity 3 — itself a mockumentary. They ended up making two of those.

Watch the Project Power trailer here 

It’s sort of telling that Joost and Schulman haven’t made a documentary since Catfish, despite the fact that the film inspired a spin-off series that has aired nearly 150 episodes. The term itself has become synonymous with online identity theft. Their latest film, Netflix’s Project Power, is their most ambitious since Catfish, but not nearly as fun.

For a film that revisits the frequently explored idea that human beings are working at only a fraction of their full capacity — remember Limitless and Lucy? — it often comes across as being in desperate need of a swift kick in the butt.

The lives of three characters collide in an ambiguously futuristic New Orleans, where young Black kids are used drug dealers to push pills on the streets. But these aren’t any ordinary pills. Popping just one of them can give a person superpowers, but only for five minutes. A narcotics cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is trying to clean up the streets with the help of a young girl working as his informer. Little do his bosses know that Frank — that’s JGL’s character — is taking the same power pills that he is trying to rid the city of.

In a parallel plotline, a mysterious man played by Jamie Foxx goes on a murderous rampage through the city’s underbelly, in an effort to locate his missing daughter. The two men, independently, stumble upon a larger conspiracy — one in which a moustache-twirling villain played by Rodrigo Santoro (you might remember him as Xerxes from 300, or Jesus from the ill-fated Ben-Hur remake) is looking to mass produce the power pill and get the entire world hooked onto it. The third act finds them joining forces, and culminates, as most superhero films seem to do these days, in a sloppy CGI slugfest.

Jamie Foxx in a still from Project Power. (ALFONSO BRESCIANI/NETFLIX)
Jamie Foxx in a still from Project Power. (ALFONSO BRESCIANI/NETFLIX)

There is interesting subtext in writer Mattson Tomlin’s script — his first, which, like Catfish, inspired a bidding war between studios — that the film fails to effectively explore. References are made to a ‘great flood’ — no doubt, Hurricane Katrina — and the government’s handling of its aftermath. JGL’s character is frequently seen wearing a Steve Gleason football jersey — an homage, perhaps, to the athlete who became a symbol of recovery in post-hurricane New Orleans.

Tomlin’s screenplay, does, however, indicate his affection for superheroes and superhero cinema. That is a good sign, considering he is credited, along with Matt Reeves, as a co-writer on the upcoming Batman film. The comic book references in the Project Power, which are mostly just nods to everyone from Johnny Storm to The Incredible Hulk, are more effectively done than any of the socio-political themes that the film briefly addresses.

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Project Power is yet another attempt by Netflix to spawn IP of its own. But it is decidedly inferior to recent action hits such as Extraction and The Old Guard -- more cluttered, less compelling. A sequel, however, seems like a foregone conclusion.

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The author tweets @RohanNaahar

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