Project Power (2020)

Just the other day, I was talking to Megan about superheroes with really shitty powers.
We’re all familiar with the X-Men who can run super-fast or throw fireballs, but what about the guy whose fingers are as sticky as a Post-It Note? Or the woman who can tell when trees are angry? Clearly the world of superpowers wouldn’t only be filled with useful, beneficial powers, but the entire spectrum of things (congrats, you can read minds, but only of earthworms!).

While “Project Power” (2020) didn’t go into that, it did dip its toes in that particular pond.
“Project Power” took place in our universe, in our timeline, where a defense contractor was working on a super soldier serum.
I wish that was a fantastical conspiracy theory, and that the government wasn’t involved in running bizarre experiments on its own citizens, but a look at MK Ultra, or the Tuskegee Syphilis study, or the squalene additive to an anthrax shot that the DOD used on service members approximately 20 years ago tells us that’s not true.
Long story short: the real-life Fed has trouble with the concept of medical ethics, especially when it’s contextualized as a matter of national security.

Anyway: the fictional ex-contractor, Teleios, failed to make a stable product that the DOD would buy.
How unstable?
Well, your options were “gain a superpower” or “explode,” so… not great.
It was never made clear what defined your luck in that area, so your only choice was to try the capsulated drug.
If you were lucky, you gained a power. That was it: you had it for approximately five minutes, and then it wore off. If you took the drug again, you got the same power for another five minutes.
If you were unlucky, your chest cavity exploded and you died.

Weirdly, “taking our drug has a 50/50 chance of killing you” was somehow a viable R&D expense for Teleios, who seemed to be on the same business-model as Syndrome from “The Incredibles” (2004): “if everyone’s special, no one is.”
The corporate end-goal was “bring about the next evolution of humans” for some reason, even though there wasn’t exactly a financially feasible positive outcome for them if they succeeded.
“Unreasonable altruism” is a hallmark of bad writing in my book.

The movie established the 5-minute usage window fairly early on, which I liked, but had already broken its own rule before it was in place: the story opened with a bank robbery by a guy who could match color with his surroundings (like a cuttlefish’s chromatophores), effectively making him invisible. It made for a great reveal and an intriguing chase sequence, but for the scene to take place at the end of the robbery – when the police would have shown up – meant that the guy had already been using his powers for more than five minutes, yet continued to use them without ever being shown to have taken a second dose.

Interestingly, there didn’t seem to be any kind of physiological tax for gaining temporary powers. One user was shown to be super strung out, but as no one else appeared affected by repeat use, it’s just as reasonable that he was also on some other drugs, like heroin.

I would have expected that after gaining the ability to self-immolate a la The Human Torch, the body would need a serious caloric refresh – something they thoroughly covered in the first season of “The Flash” (2014+) – but no, once the drug wore off, users were free to take a second dose.
That said: overdosing on the drug was shown to be deadly; one pill was fine, three would cause you to explode.

“Our user base is exploding” seemed to be the major hurdle that Teleios had to resolve, beyond just dead participants.

As was displayed, and would be expected, bad guys were hired for their specific powers – grunts were useful if they were strong or bulletproof, assassins were the guys who could move extra fast or use bone-claws, etc.
This being an illegal drug that could also kill you, the good guys/law enforcement did not take the drugs… unless the plot called for it, of course. Then it was okay.

Art (Jamie Foxx) was an Army major who had been part of Teleios’ initial test group, and while their tests were ultimately deemed a failure, the drug had worked its way deep into his system and his daughter was born with powers. Teleios, being the perfect cinematic corporate villain, did what every cinematic corporate villain did and kidnapped said child, so Art was dead set on saving her. Teleios tried the dual-pronged attempt at stopping him by A) sending assassins after him specifically to murder him, and B) spread a disinformation campaign to paint him as the drug kingpin who was in charge of distribution.
Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levit) was a cop with the New Orleans Police Department, who flipped the “powers or death” coin and found himself to be bullet-proof when drugged up. No other kinds of -proof though, just bullets. He enlisted the help of Robin (Dominique Fishback) as an informant to help him find other dealers on the street and/or get the drugs themselves off the street, though “off the street” seemed synonymous with “into his own personal collection.”
I know it’s one of those “cops doing the wrong thing for the right reasons” type deals, but that’s a bold choice to have in a movie released in 2020.

Ultimately Art and Frank joined forces and found a way to stop Teleios – by exploding its CEO – and save Art’s kid, and all the good guys lived happily ever after.
Sorry if that spoiled it for you, but the last 12 years of superhero movies should have made that ending incredibly obvious before the opening title card even showed up.

The soundtrack to this existed, but like many others, it didn’t make an impact, so it’s neither here nor there.

The special effects were pretty impressive. I think there was one scene that looked a little off, but I’m pretty sure I noticed it specifically because I watch out for those kinds of things.
Every time someone took the drug – which, frustratingly, was never actually given a name – we saw some kind of visualization of things changing: a pupil dilating, blood pumping, swirls…swirling. Most of those scenes would have looked right at home from a mid-2000s iTunes music visualizer.
Even when a henchman tried the drug for the first time and exploded, we still saw some kind of warp-event, so the consistency there was great, and the timing of that scene was a solid piece of dark comedy.

At one point, just over an hour in, I paused the movie to grab something from the kitchen and noted to Megan that there were still 45-ish minutes left, and that it felt like the movie should be nearly over. Those 45-ish minutes weren’t bad, and they added to the story/got to the conclusion just fine, but the pacing up to that point was off just enough that it felt like it should have been over 3/5ths of the way in.

Despite the R rating, this movie wasn’t overly gory – yes, there were multiple people exploding throughout, and a few severed limbs here and there, but no arbitrary naked people and no excessive blood.
Frankly, I think this could have been PG-13, considering the content that many of Disney’s “Avengers”-series movies have gotten away with.

By and large, this was decent. It wasn’t great, but it was good enough. It made for a nice evening watch from my couch, as it was a Netflix original and all.
I don’t think I would have been happy to pay to see it in theaters, but it was a fine use of 110 minutes from a subscription service I was already paying for.