‘Project Power’ has solid action, but a weak story drains the fun

Posted on August 21, 2020

By MARK VIOLA

Netflix has been doing its best to fill in for the lack of big-budget action films on the silver screen this summer due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, with movies such as “Extraction” and “The Old Guard.”

The newest action flick they’ve tossed our way for home consumption is “Project Power,” which follows several characters, all of whom have been affected by a new designer drug hitting the streets of New Orleans, La., that gives the user five minutes of a random superpower.

With a few exceptions, the action is solid in “Project Power,” and co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (“Paranormal Activity 3”) give us a good looking movie that wouldn’t seem out of place on the big screen. The lead performances from Jamie Foxx (“Django Unchained”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”) and Dominique Fishback (“The Deuce”) are good as well.

Taking a more grounded look at superpowers than most comic book films, “Project Power” has an interesting concept and does some interesting things with it, but lackluster villains, whose motives seem muddled at best, really drag down the proceedings. Ultimately, there’s just not enough meat on the narrative bones for this to be anything more than a popcorn action flick. That’s not a problem in itself, but with a deeper story and more fleshed-out villains, this could have been something special.

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