Project Power

Netflix action movies and their sameness

The Netflix movie has become a bit of its own genre in recent years. I don't mean films from auteurs like Scorsese, Baumbach, Kaufman, Cauron, and Lee. I mean films like Extraction, Spence Confidential, The Old Guard, and Project Power. These movies represent something that we don't see a lot of now and that's the stand alone mid budget action movie with big stars. Are these movies good? Well, they're good enough.

I'm going to mostly focus on Project Power because I think its the most interesting.

It's pretty rare to find action movies with a big budget and stars that isn't an adaptation and doesn't seem like it's trying to start a franchise. Project Power has and $85 million budget which is the same budget as Shazam!, Fast & Furious, and everyones favorite Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Unlike these three films Project Power isn't apart of a big established franchise and it isn't going to be able to make its money back at the box office like the other three.

Like I said before though, this isnt a new thing for Netflix. The Old Guard and Extraction had $70 and $65 million dollar budgets respectively and had big stars, Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth. They've also got pretty experienced directors in Gina Prince-Blythwood and Sam Hargrave. I dont know how to put it into words but doesn't this seem strange? Project Power is a fine movie with and interesting concept that never gets fully realized. This probably could've been made for less. Its got some style but Bad Boys has more style than it on 1/3 if the budget. Is it the effects that cost so much? They were pretty good.

The only reason that I'm still thinking about Project Power is that I'm writing this right now. I log most movies in letterboxd but I just forgot for this one. I rarely find Netflix action movies rewatchable which are the sole purpose of an action movie. They should be infinitely rewatchable.

Maybe my problem is that the concept didn't get fleshed out so let try and think of a plot that can go well with this interesting concept.

PLOT PITCH

Act 1

The pill has been circulating through New Orleans for a couple of months now and the cop duo of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jamie Fox are tracking the case. They're slowly taking down individual dealers but it's not really getting them anywhere. They take down one dealer, played by Dominique Fishback and also find some other drugs and gun in her appartment meaning they can put her in jail for real time. She's given a choice, help Jamie and Joseph or go to jail. This is where we find out about her mother diabeties and that shes dealing to support her. She talks to her mother and she says to help Jamie and Joseph.

Act 2

Now in my verison the pill doesn't have a chance of just killing you (it wasn't that big of a threat in the actual movie anyway) it just brings out one of the 6 powers (or however many there were). Her power is the bullet proof one like Joseph in the real version. This makes her the enforcer from this point on. She leads them to her supplier but he's with 4 or 5 of his boys and they're all taking the pill so it's a big super hero brawl with Dominique, Joseph (who uses the pill and his power is ice), and Jamie Fox who uses his base player model. They slowly work their way up the drug dealer ladder getting into a lot of fights and showign us a lot more of the power at the same time. They figure out that the drugs are being made on the Genesis and they've been doing small tests on different east coast cities in the USA.

Act 3

Theres two different ideas that I have for the third act.

1) They sneak on the ship and its got the same sort of progression as a video game where they have to work their way through different powers to eventually get to the leader who uses a more potent version of the drug to become super powerful.

2) They're fighting through the boat and near the end Dominique gets injured and Joseph is pinned down forcing Jamie to use the pill that he's had in his pocket the whole movie in the same sort of fashion as the original.

Maybe I'm thinking about this movie too much. I don't know. I just really like the premise but it felt kinda bland and the cinematography felt like it wanted to be stylish but didn't really know how. Theres some shots where you think "oh thats a good shot" like when Jamie Foxx gets put of the truck in front of Machine Gun Kelly's apartment. Then there's just some quick under 1 second long shots where you think, what the fuck is going on there like the inside of the helmet shots when people are riding motorcycles. I feel like if this was a Michael Bay movie it would really fit becuase this movie requires more style and better execution of CGI action scenes.

Oh well. All of these Netflix action movies are fine. I'll probably write something about the next one and the one after that.