Project Power (2020) – Review

On the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana, a pill that gives its taker unpredictable superpowers for five minutes begins circulating. Upon this happening, a local cop must team up with a teenage dealer and former soldier, fuelled with a personal vendetta to take down the group responsible for its creation and circulation. Another pretty impressive Netflix production that’s easy on the eye and spectacular to watch in patches, but perhaps lacks any real substance to warrant a second viewing anytime soon. Project Power is now streaming on Netflix.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Director: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Writers: Mattson Tomlin
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dominique Fishback

Having already seen and reviewed the recently released, Sputnik (2020), another release this past weekend came in the form of Project Power – a movie starring Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the latter being an actor that has gone somewhat off the radar as of late, enjoying his time away from the big screen. Something that instantly struck me was the location of the film and cinematography on display. New Orleans is a city that’s always intrigued me and to see it featured so heavily here was extremely pleasing to see. In general, the photography was very good, and the soundtrack seemed very urban and very fitting for a film of this nature, especially considering the fact that the filmmakers delved heavily into the side of the city struck badly with poverty.

One thing you can’t fault Netflix for is the way in which they create and produce their films. For sure, it was flashy and easy on the eye, along with some sensational special effects yet again, but it could be argued that the story wasn’t as straight forward as it could have been, with quite a bit of unwarranted convolution thrown in there too, couple that with the fact that some would even argue that at times it lacked any form of substance to garner the interest of the viewer. The script was also noticeably weak at times, which meant it was difficult to create an affection towards any of the characters or invest emotionally into them.

With that being said, Project Power did deliver one of the finest tributes I’ve witnessed in any feature film and that was the tribute towards the former New Orleans Saints player, Steve Gleason. Joseph Gordon-Levitt was seen in multiple scenes wearing the number thirty-seven jersey, which Gleason was famously known for. Gleason is currently struggling with the incurable amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease.

In terms of the acting, Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt co-starred in this one and brought about as much star power as any film can bring to the table, adopting the roles of Art and Frank respectively, while Dominique Fishback took up the position of Robin. At times, Robin did seem like a forced character and one that perhaps didn’t warrant as much screen presence as she was given, but ultimately did well given the script put before her.

Elsewhere, and rather notably, Machine Gun Kelly and Casey Neistat were both given cameos. The latter appearing in a largely non-speaking role, but it was still pleasurable to see the YouTube star regardless.

Overall, Project Power did feel like an overly elaborate tribute to New Orleans as a city, highlighting the people, the culture, and the football team largely, but it also managed to showcase some really impressive CGI and action scenes in general. A decent flick, but probably not a movie I’ll be rushing to re-watch anytime soon.

“There are no laws on this drug. They don’t exist officially.”

Frank – Project Power