The movie opens with a group of New Orleans drug dealers being addressed by a clearly Evil Corporate Guy about how he was going to give them free supplies of a new drug called Power to sell. What does it do? It gives the taker five minutes of superpower, though there is no way to tell what that power will be. You may become invisible or super strong or bulletproof or you may explode, so caveat emptor. (But once you find your power, it's the same thing every time; the only question is answered with the first dose.)
Six weeks later, the Big Easy is awash in reports of freaky incidents of people outrunning or throwing cars as the Power spreads. We meet Robin (Fishback) in an abandoned amusement park getting jumped by a trio of customers. Fortunately, NOPD Detective Frank (Gordon-Levitt) is on the scene to break up the deal, arresting her and allowing the guys to leave. After they do, he uncuffs her and it's revealed that he's not only a cop, he's a customer for Power, seeking to even the odds against the Power-enhanced crooks. This is illustrated in a subsequent scene where he captures an invisible bank robber who shoots him in the head only to have the bullet bounce off Frank's Powered bulletproof skin.
Meanwhile, Art (Foxx) is trying to find the suppliers of Power who also kidnapped his daughter. He tracks down one of the opening scene's dealers, Newt (Machine Gun Kelly, credited as Colson Baker), in a squalid tenement posing as a buyer. In a bonkers sequence that ensues, we get our first look at what Power does as Newt basically becomes the Human Torch from Fantastic Four. Art narrowly escapes, but retrieves a cell phone which is receiving texts from Robin, so he begins to track her down.
In the aftermath of the bank heist, Frank is suspicious of the dark-suited guys who showed up to take control of the robbery scene and pressures his Captain (Courtney B. Vance) to not suspend him for using Power so he can find out what's going on. Captain gives him a sheet with Art's photo on it listing him as "The Major" and the source of Power. This sets everyone on a collision course based on misinformation as to who's really in control and what the ultimate plan is.
While the premise seems like something from a comic book, it's actually an original screenplay by rookie Mattson Tomlin (who is co-writer of the upcoming Matt Reeves The Batman reboot) and the lapses here raise some concern for the Caped Crusader. For starters, the five-minute time limit raises some logical problems namely what is the user's incentive to keep taking a $500 pill for such a short effective period. OK, you've taken the pill, you're now a fire monster or have bone spikes bursting from your body making you an ersatz Wolverine, but then what? You burn the house down or stab someone and then want to shell out $500 more? Seems like a pricey high even if you can throw cars for five minutes with your superstrength.
But the bigger problem is that the concept is trapped within a very predictable trope-bound plot. The makers are a Very Evil Pharmaceutical Company using the users as paying lab rats intending to sell the Power to the highest bidder - get it? - who will then have what exactly? A fighting force of random X-Men for five minutes at a time? When Art demurs about what his power was, is it any question that the Big Star is going to uncork something uber-strong by the end? No, it isn't.
On the plus side, directorial team Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Paranormal Activity 3 & 4, Nerve reviewed here) shoot things with a shiny neon-lit eye similar to Nerve, focusing on the rundown areas of NOLA that don't appear on the tour brochures. You don't often see movies set with economically-deprived areas and characters. Of course it ladles in a dose of social justice wokeism on top of a cast where nearly all the villains are white with Levitt being the only "good one," but it's not sledgehammered and one scene flips the script a bit for laughs. The Power trips are well executed with top notch visual effects for the most part.
Performances are solid, though no one is really bringing their AAA game. The shocker was Fishback as the teenaged dealer with a flair for freestyle rap (written by Chika, who appears as Robin's classmate) because she's unrecognizable under her braids as being from The Deuce. (She's actually nearly 30 years old.)
On the technical side, the Dolby Vision version is a good showcase for your capable home theater, but the attendant Atmos soundtrack doesn't really utilize the height channels very much; mostly settles for low end hip-hop boom for the subwoofer.
Since there's nothing in theaters due to Hot Fad Plague 2020 and you're already paying for Netflix, Project Power is already waiting for you as The Old Guard was a few weeks back. While not as good as the somewhat underwhelming Charlize Theron actioner, it's not that bad. Just go in with appropriate expectations.
Score: 5/10. Catch it on Netflix.
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