Netflix’s Newest Superhero Sensation

Project Power, a new riff on the superhero genre starring Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt that streams on Netflix from today, has earned mixed reviews.

“There obviously have been countless takes on the superhero formula, so what fresh spin could possibly be left?” asks Deadline.

Debuting screenwriter Mattson Tomlin has come up with a clever twist on the tired genre. The writer whose next job was co-writing another comic book flick, the upcoming The Batman, asks the simple question: What if a pill could give you a specific superpower? Then he lays on the complications. It actually works, as far as it goes, and certainly provides a lot of fodder for action scenes and some intriguing characters.

“It’s a decent enough set-up and the action plays out at a good pace,” Radio Times concurred, “albeit not in a particularly unpredictable or tense manner, hitting most of the beats you’d expect in any mainstream thriller of its ilk …

“In short, Project Power is the latest in a long line of perfectly fine, nothing-to-write-home-about style movies that will keep subscribers happy until the next one comes along – and it’s probably not too cynical to suggest that this is precisely what Netflix will have wanted.”

The Times’ succinct verdict was: “It’s nearly two hours of expertly orchestrated mayhem that will ridicule your desire for superhero nonsense while satiating your appetite for the same.”

And Variety summed it up as “a visually busy conspiracy thriller that’s more hurtling than hypnotic …

“Project Power gives you the sensation that it’s drawing on so many decades’ worth of pulp clichés that the movie can scarcely bother to pretend it’s anything but a remix.”