Project Power Absolutely Corrupts

Project Power

A new drug has come to the streets of New Orleans. A drug called power. A drug that instead of causing a delusion of power, actually for the length of a five minute rush, grants its user power. A five minute super power, and like the X-Men or the Inhuman’s, each person develops their own unique power.

Because this drug is sold on the streets the power it grants has been granted to plenty of bad people. These bad people in turn, turn New Orleans into a New Jack City. It may as well be New Jack City since the film has no visible or tonal connection to New Orleans what-so-ever. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re informed the setting is New Orleans, few would ever know.

“Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

~Lord Acton~

Why we were informed it is New Orleans we may never know. New Orleans or New Jack City, whatever. The place isn’t the point, the point is power. There are really a few points wanting desperately to be made within Project Power, but Mattson Tomlin, the writer of this movie, would rather make Lord Acton’s point…to the nth degree.

Directed by the duo who brought you the Paranormal series, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost seem thrilled to have a story that allows them to do some slow motion violence and blow things up. The $85 million they were given is considerably more money to make this than they have ever been given. But instead of using the scenery of New Orleans to somehow move this story along, or spend a few extra dollars on some rewrites, we get this fairly glossy popcorn movie.

The great tragedy of this movie is that by using an addictive drug as a source of a superpower, Mattson has given himself untold opportunities to explore addiction. Unfortunately, the movie falls short of the promise. Mattson does take both users and sellers of this new drug to highlight the dubious ways in which people justify their unethical behavior. Yet in this world of heroes and villains, Mattson creates characters of moral ambiguity at best.

Project Power’s protagonist is a young girl who sells the drugs to raise money for an operation for her sick mother. In a landscape where the villains are endowed with superpowers but the cops are not, Mattson offer’s us a cop who buys the drug from the young girl to level the playing field. Mattson creates cloying scenes between the cop (Frank Shaver played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the young girl Robin (a very good Dominique Fishback), to assure the viewers that this cop genuinely cares about this young girl drug dealer, and that he has good reason for being a power junkie.

We’re told via exposition that some mysterious player has released the drug onto the streets for free. This exposition is undermined by the fact that Robin is selling this drug to buyers. Admittedly, I might have missed the memo that the free stuff ran out, that’s how mediocre this film is. It’s easy to tune out and just let the eye candy wash over you.

I did pay enough attention to somehow follow further complications Mattson introduces. Amid this morally ambiguous milieu we are introduced to Art (Jamie Foxx). Art is Delta Force, and as it turns out, one of the original test subjects for the Power Project. I guess this Power drug works kind of like a radio-active spider bite in the MCU. The power Art has is derived from the pistol shrimp (WTH?).

Frank the morally ambiguous but lovable cop derives his power from the armadillo (lol). This is not the complex tale Joost and Schulman seem to think it is. It’s just needlessly complex with subplots that have no real purpose. Dominique, our protagonist, wants to be a rapper. Art has told her that this is her power. Yet when the time comes for power revealed she has the power of resurrection.

Almost as if the filmmakers realize this, they have what seems a tacked on ending that let’s us know that Robin goes on to pursue a career in rap. That’s the extent of the movies relationship to rap. This is too bad since rap has long been a source of power for many in the real world. Countless have risen from obscurity to fame and fortune because of rap. Countless more consume rap as if it is even a power source for them.

No exploration of rap and its inherent power. No exploration of addiction. No exploration of a society crumbling because of its own moral ambiguity. Just a bunch of disquieting ideas thrown at this tale hoping one or more stick. $85 million is a lot to spend on that kind of mediocrity.