Virtuous superheroes get all the great press, however “Project Power” makes a fairly logical level with its central premise: If drugs actually existed that gave human beings superpowers, isn’t it extra possible that the individuals who used these powers could be as much as no good?
That’s the world posited by screenwriter Mattson Tomlin and administrators Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman in “Project Power,” an imaginative, garish, sometimes corny and usually entertaining riff on the superhero style.
Set in a hyperstylized New Orleans and shot in a method that places a barely lurid, greasy sheen over all the pieces, the amped-up style flick means that if folks might all of the sudden discover themselves capable of break by means of partitions, mix into their environment and outrun police vehicles, they could use these powers to not struggle crime, however to rob banks and get away by outrunning police vehicles.
It’s a world through which superpowers inevitably result in chaos with a aspect of profiteering – which, given the state of the world in the present day, might be a fairly good guess. And even when it doesn’t make a complete lot of sense a lot of the time, “Project Power” has the parents it must promote the premise in Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback as an unlikely trio out to maintain all the pieces from going to hell.
Gordon-Levitt performs Frank, a New Orleans cop who’s doing his greatest to deal with a metropolis the place the drug commerce has all of the sudden been remodeled by an inflow of shiny drugs that go by the identify of “Power,” as a result of that’s precisely what they ship. The drawback is, a person doesn’t know what sort of energy will probably be: The capsule makes you a superhero for 5 minutes with powers based mostly on diversifications which have been made within the animal kingdom, however you don’t know till you are taking it if the capsule will make you tremendous robust or tremendous quick or flip you right into a chameleon or allow you to burst into flame and scorch all people round you.
Or, by the best way, it’d simply make you explode and die.
Frank figures that the one technique to sustain with the unhealthy guys is to maintain a inventory of his personal drugs, which make him bulletproof. And earlier than lengthy, with the help of an aspiring teenage rapper and part-time drug vendor named Robin, he finds himself on the path of “the Major,” an ex-soldier he’s advised is the supply of all of the Power in New Orleans.
The Major, although, is definitely named Art, he’s performed by Jamie Foxx and he’s not the supply of something, besides perhaps a world of harm for anyone who will get in his method. The actual story, he tells Frank, is that Power was developed by a protection contractor who examined it on a bunch of troopers (together with Art) and is now utilizing the unwitting New Orleans populace as lab rats to make the drug extra manageable and extra sellable.
The mysterious group, which matches by the identify of Teleios and clearly has authorities ties, has additionally kidnapped Art’s daughter, Tracy (Kyanna Simpson), who might have been born with the much-coveted subsequent step, “permanent power.” So Art, Frank and Robin tackle the shadowy authorities group and a slew of villains who’re both closely armed or inhumanly robust.
You might consider “Project Power” as a small-group-against-the-world motion film, apart from these loopy particular powers that may flip hand-to-hand fight in a rundown condo constructing right into a model of Gandalf’s struggle in opposition to the Balrog in “The Lord of the Rings,” minus the magic wand and the shiny whip. Or you may consider it as a superhero film, besides that the filmmakers are decided to sink into the grit and make factors about revenue motives and the best way Black folks and poor inner-city residents have been seen as dispensable.
But sci-fi and social commentary have lengthy been snug bedfellows, so “Project Power” is a straightforward style hybrid that has enjoyable making pointed social commentary and getting loopy whereas it does so. Dark and moist and garish – if it’s not raining in any specific scene, it both simply did or it’s…
