Sign up for our newsletter. The movie smoothly weaves in exposition that ties the power to people's genetic structure, so they'll get the same ability each time.

Project Power starts small and benefits from the more intimate nature of its premise: a pill that can give people their own unique superpowers for five minutes. Privacy | Not that derivative is an entirely or even inherently bad thing. Will you become hopelessly addicted, or recoil and explode into a million fiery shards?

But the adventure's central trio -- played by Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback -- plus its clever use of its New Orleans setting, elevate the film above a familiar premise. Foxx is charismatic and effortlessly funny, without shortchanging the tortured side of Art's bitter experience.

(Nice touch having Chika write the lyrics for the raps Robin delivers.). Till then, the movie keeps the excitement percolating — check out the chase scene in a burning building — while providing a forum for three terrific actors to bring humanity to what could have slid by as  comic-book fantasy. Yes, and here’s why.

The visual-effects artists have clearly had fun answering some of those questions in as grotesque and eye-popping a fashion as possible. What issues are on the ballot in California and Los Angeles County. As it is, we didn’t get major action blockbusters this year, and so it will likely be more of an oasis than it would have been otherwise. Some of the superpowered scenes turn up the heat. We know Frank loves his city because he wears the No. Review: As Netflix superhuman action-thrillers go, ‘Project Power’ is no ‘Old Guard’ Jamie Foxx and Dominique Fishback in the movie “Project Power.” (Netflix) There’s no question that Project Power is borrowing from other movies, such as Bradley Cooper’s underrated Limitless and elements from the Marvel and DC Comics universe. Directed by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman. The theme of America's systemic power structures is reinforced as mutual trust develops between Art and Robin. Slickly directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman from a script by Mattson Tomlin, the movie is too fast and flashy to qualify as boring but also too generic to draw blood, the assorted guts and viscera that occasionally splatter the frame notwithstanding. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. A Preview of the 56th Chicago International Film Festival, Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time Offers Hours of Deadly Fun, NYFF 2020: The Human Voice, The Woman Who Ran, French Exit, NYFF 2020: City Hall, Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue, Hopper/Welles. How’d they do that? Is it good or bad, or at least worth sampling? It’s the hottest thing to hit the market in ages, or at least since last week. We have the mysterious “Major,” a do-gooder cop and a young dealer in-over-her-head serving as our heroes, all fighting for a place in this crazy world.

When she reveals her dream of becoming a rapper, he encourages her to nurture her power as the gift that makes her special. We also travel to a nice range of New Orleans locations -- from recognizable downtown to residential neighborhoods -- making the character's lives feel more grounded and believable. The new Netflix documentary on K-pop’s Blackpink, “Light up the Sky,” provides a clear sense of each member’s personality, far more so than does its new album. You're Black. It’s like someone poured out a bag of great ideas on the table in the writers’ room and the team then actively tried to shape that into the most generic action movie possible. There are still good movies to celebrate, no matter how we see them, so make the 2021 Oscars a PSA for an embattled film industry.
Who doesn’t need some whiz-bang escapism in August 2020? A look at California’s November ballot propositions. You might think Netflix's Project Power sounds a little unoriginal. Production designer: Naomi Shohan Discuss: Project Power review: Jamie Foxx's pill-popping thriller has surprising heart. The Times endorses one incumbent and three newcomers for the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees. For more. It’s a movie that could have worked if it went off the edge like a “Crank” sequel and there are times when it feels like it’s just about to do that, such as in a ridiculous action sequence shot from an unexpected POV, but then it stops itself. Project Power attracted big names in Jamie Foxx and Joseph-Gordon Levitt and directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the Catfish dudes who made identity fraud a cautionary digital pastime. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Review: Netflix’s Blackpink documentary offers a surprisingly intimate look behind the K-pop curtain. From the start, New Orleans provides a gritty setting for a thriller that unfolds predominantly at night. And there’s fun to be had in watching the young woman bring out the Clint Eastwood in Frank (“I guess you gotta ask yourself one question, punk”). Special effects supervisor: Yves Debono In PROJECT POWER, there's a new drug on the streets of New Orleans that gives people individualized superpowers. She’s this movie’s most reliable power and the only thing you’ll remember about it five minutes later. In terms of both actual storytelling and subtext, there’s so much that the creators of “Project Power” could have done, but they chose the path of least resistance, turning a story of reclaimed control and buried human strength into a dull action movie that only gets by on the charisma of its stars and speediness of its filmmaking. As it is, we didn’t get major action blockbusters this year, and so it will likely be more of an oasis than it would have been otherwise.

The pacing drags through action set-pieces left obscured by messy compositions and limp, over-stylized visual choices. Justin Chang has been a film critic for the Los Angeles Times since 2016. You have no way of knowing how you’ll react, really. You don’t know what power will be unleashed until you take it the first time. Would you try it? As a cargo ship pulls into the port at 3 a.m., a sharp-suited, sleazy middleman named Biggie (Rodrigo Santoro) oversees the unloading of countless crates all packed with iridescent capsules, which he offers up free to the assembled "young entrepreneurs" for distribution. They bill their work here as "A Film by Henry & Rel," a vanity credit echoed in the taste for flashy visual bombast. Those abilities are rooted in animal characteristics, and the possibilities are as varied and unpredictable as the Chinese zodiac: Will you regenerate severed limbs like a lizard, or camouflage yourself like an octopus? You’re a superhero. Glenn Close and Amy Adams spar as mother and daughter in ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ trailer. This more or less sums up the premise of “Project Power,” a new and vaguely superhero-ish action-thriller set in New Orleans, where drug dealers are pushing an unusually volatile new product called Power. Anything! Fishback (whom you may have seen in HBO's The Deuce) plays Robin, a teenager whose life in the Big Easy is anything but as she's forced to deal Power pills to help with her uninsured mom's medical bills. There are sharp, bony protuberances and frozen limbs, some of them wielded by regulation baddies (including a supplier played by Rodrigo Santoro).
Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. Sitemap | When Netflix began promoting its latest entry in the summer-that-never-was blockbuster stakes, Project Power, it was hard to suppress an eye-roll of weary puzzlement at the fanboys eager to slam it as lame and derivative. How to vote. One customer may suddenly be able to run 45 mph, another can grow bulletproof skin, and still another can become invisible. FACEBOOK One of those lab rats was Art (Jamie Foxx), aka the Major, who has passed on genetic modifications acquired during the testing to his daughter Tracy (Kyanna Simpson) through a process akin to fetal alcohol syndrome. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Final Preview, James Bond Producers Don't Want the Next 007 to Be a Daniel Craig Copycat, Prime Day Deal: Here's How to Get $10 Free Amazon Credit, PS4 Firmware Update 8.0 Changes Party and Messages Features, Best Buy's Amazon Prime Day Counter Deals End Today, the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Native American women, Things Ghost of Tsushima Doesn't Tell You.

Buttigieg is the Biden campaign’s ruthless secret weapon. He is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Every time that “Project Power” threatens to become something more engaging and interesting, it pulls back from that edge. Who doesn’t need some whiz-bang escapism in August 2020? For the caring part, thank the actors. Think of the possibilities. While the villains could have been more multidimensional (the wonderful Landecker is given too little to do), Joost and Schulman allow the main characters room to breathe even as they keep the pedal to the metal for much of the brisk run time.

The nod to New Orleans sports and culture feels, as with so much else in “Project Power,” like a grab for specificity within a context that couldn’t be more derivative. In a touch that's schematic but functional, Robin has been learning about that condition in high school. What would the power structure of society do with this ability to form instant superheroes (and supervillains), and, more interestingly, what would it do to communities of people who have had power stripped from them over generations? Swallowing a pill in Project Power yields unpredictable results.

There's a cool mix here of digital effects and visceral hand-to-hand combat, notably when Foxx takes on contortionist Xavier Day and silat fighter Yoshi Sudarso. It unlocks different superpowers in every person who swallows it — bulletproof skin, invisibility, thermoregulation, chameleonic adaptability, fire-resistance, bendable bones and limbs that spout knives. Whatever this eye-popping head trip lacks in plausibility, it makes up for in flash and a sense of a world spinning off its axis.

Screenwriter: Mattson Tomlin Results may vary, as the pharmaceutical warning goes. An interlude in which Robin dresses Art's wounds at a veterinary clinic is especially sweet. And his Saints jersey shows how much he loves his city. EMAIL ME. The power pill, it emerges, is a DNA-based concentrate developed out of the evolutionary characteristics of multiple species. Hey, have you heard of this new stuff? Give me a twist. Tomlin's script alludes to the imbalance of a system that aims to monopolize rather than disseminate power by choosing a city with a large minority population like New Orleans as ground zero before the wider rollout of a pill being developed to spread chaos and topple governments. In fact, what makes Project Power entertaining is its canny combination of familiar ingredients in a textured real-world milieu that gives it fresh flavor. The answer, at least with regard to “Project Power,” is likely to fall somewhere in between. Music: Joseph Trapanese, Chika Distributor: Netflix But a lot goes right as well. She’s a livewire who dodges clichés with the skill of an Olympian, relying on her own power as an actor, singer and electrifying screen presence. Oscar winner Foxx is Art, aka the “Major,” an ex-soldier the authorities think is behind the drug. Directors Joost and Schulman have come a long way after their debut film, Catfish, but Project Power shows their ongoing learning curve.