3 Short Paragraphs: Project Power

2020, Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman (Viral) -- Netflix

What would you do for super powers? How about just five minutes worth? Yeah, if you are me, then not too much. Seems like a low ROI. But sure, go ahead make the metaphorical connection to addictive substances and you might have something there. I imagine the rush of doing a Flame On (!) even for the briefest moment would be quite the thing. Well, except for the fact you just lit on fire, and your clothes are burned up, and possibly the fuel is your own flesh. But, again, addicts do stupid things. This is where the movie would have us go, with the hopes we can just ignore the logic of the matter (super powers tend to ignore logic & physics as they are) and go along with the adrenaline pumping action.

Art (Jamie Foxx, Baby Driver) is in New Orleans tracking down the source of the newest, hottest drug on the street, the aforementioned -- "Power". Mixed into the story are dedicated street cop Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Dark Knight Rises) using the drug for his own purposes, and his street contact, teenager Robin (Dominique Fishback, The Hate You Give) who really is the centre of this movie, and she carries it onward even as the rest flags around typical action thriller tropes. Art is at the centre of this conspiracy (but no, not the movie), having lost his daughter to the organization responsible for the drug's creation and release, while Frank just wants to protect his city, even if he has to sacrifice his own health. Robin is literally dragged along for most of the movie, as the trio do your typical chase-the-drug-dealers-down run, but it is her strength that allows the two men to come out on top.

Despite the shoot-first, think-later aspects of the movie, you can see they were trying to establish something here, maybe not a whole franchise worthy world, but at least something to sink your teeth into. The problem is that it spends so little time thinking about this world, and the trappings. We get only a few examples of the drug being used, when they should have done at least a quick montage scene of how often the drug can go wrong (let's just say the powers it provides are not always useful) but no, they sunk all the CG money into key scenes, including this stupid timer method of turning the pill on. Turn it on? Yeah, remember the gimmick in Dredd where the drug looks like an inhaler with brown goo mixed in? In this one, they twist the pill and it clicks on, emitting a beautiful firey light as it gets absorbed into the system. Then, power on, slow-mo CGI and Action! Each pill also has more packaging than an iPhone. But after that wears off, we should have had something else about the Why's and How's, alas it just went down a typical the-street-is-an-experiment angle, which frankly, was not very interesting.