With Black Widow, Morbius and Wonder Woman all delayed due to COVID-19, it’s been a superhero-free summer. Fortunately, streaming services have stepped in to fill the gap. We’re soon going to get the much-anticipated second season of The Boys on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix impressed with last month’s Charlize Theron action film The Old Guard and they look set to follow that now with Jamie Foxx’s Project Power.
It premieres today and is already getting some serious hype. The pic’s a twisted, imaginative take on a superhero movie that centres on a new drug that gives people superpowers, but only for five minutes. For example, the drug can set someone on fire Human Torch-style or give a person super-speed, among other things.
Within this weird world we find Foxx’s Art, a soldier tasked with discovering the origins of the new drug and who’s distributing it. Joining him are a high school drug dealer played by Dominique Fishback and a cop battling the drug played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Behind the camera, meanwhile, are Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, who you may remember from Catfish and the Paranormal Activity movies.
Project Power is currently sitting at 69% on the Tomatometer, with critics praising the way it mixes science-fiction, superheroes and cop movies, as well as the imaginative ways it shows the drug’s effects on people. There’s also a lot of praise for Jamie Foxx’s lead performance, but he’s solid in pretty much everything he does, so that’s not a huge surprise. Rising star Dominque Fishback is also picking up a lot of positive words, with critics dubbing this her breakthrough role.
Common criticisms seem to be that the film doesn’t quite square the circle of the moral quandaries it raises and that the action sequences can get very abstract in the way they’re shot. But right now, Project Power is looking like yet another great addition to the Netflix Originals library.
