Project Power

For an action movie about substance abuse, the new Netflix movie Project Power is sorely lacking in substance. It has a premise — high-tech pills give users random superpowers for 5 minutes, or maybe just kill them — and it has a lot of running around and fighting. It’s got an aggressive visual style, with high-contrast photography, kinetic camera moves, and randomly off-kilter compositions. It’s got a couple movie stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Frank, an honest but rule-breaking police detective; Jamie Foxx is Art, a slick avenger — the “bad guy” you know will be teaming up with the “good guy” at the movie’s halfway point. (“Frank,” “Art” — dig those name choices. Pretty clever, huh?)

What Project Power doesn’t have is character development or a plot that raises the stakes beyond saving people (or oneself) from getting slaughtered. Frank is every rogue cop cliché rolled into one and flattened into a thin outline. Art is every antihero whose violence turns out to be in service to justice. As Robin, Frank’s part-time drug-dealing sidekick (“Robin” — get it?), Dominique Fishback manages to make an impression despite direction by Ariel "Rel" Schulman and Henry Joost (Viral) that’s so flashy it barely lets any performer register an emotion before flitting to some new neon-colored image.

The directors’ obsession with movement (whether a scene calls for it or not) and saturated hues worked fine in the pulpy popcorn flick Nerve, but Project Power — that “PRAH-ject,” not “pro-JECT,” in case you’re wondering how to pronounce the awful title — pretends to something greater: questions of loyalty and morality and… you know, stuff like that. Squirrel!

The screenplay is essentially an endless chase-and-fight scene with pauses to showcase what the magic pills can do: a human torch! bulletproof skin! exploding bodies! a woman with Elsa’s powers from Frozen! It’s all familiar and all jumbled together to no effective purpose. If this is what an “Art-istic” superpowers movie looks like, please send me back to Marvel on the next plane out.

Project Power does get points for showcasing the less touristy sides of New Orleans — cue throwaway reference to Hurricane Katrina — and its two stars retain some magnetism amid the tumult. But those are slim satisfactions. The whole affair is like watching someone play a violent videogame without sharing the controller — you can sort of follow what’s going on, but you’re not involved. Not surprisingly, Schulman and Joost’s next announced project is based on an actual videogame. They should do very well with that.

Grade: D-minus. Rated R. Now streaming on Netflix.

(Photo courtesy of Netflix)