Project Power Movie Review

It has been 10 years since Catfish launched the duo of directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman as promises of ambitious and minimally substantial cinema. If a decade later they were unable to repeat the enthusiasm and narrative effervescence of the premiere, it is impossible to say that they are incoherent in pursuing a thematic cut that they have committed to since 2010 and it makes sense now in Power , the most important product Netflix of the season that points, without exercising a hermetic authorial curve, a proposal that connects it to previous features without creating a structural link, only conceptual.

His main interests go through an investigation of young society with what is fantastic about modernity, and how much that same department contains elements that make this relationship positive or negative. From the overwhelming reach of the internet to the addictive connection in games by application, through subdivisions of fear, from the technology that sees everything until it arrives. In possible pandemic tragedies, its young protagonists discover a new world that is not very admirable and they need to tame relationships that will be forged from these parameter changes, whether on this plane or not, in a fabulous way or not. 

None of this is a justification for talking about compliments on your new feature without guilt, but it is definitely a way of looking at a group of films that is constantly attacked, not without reason, while there is a search for a cinema that allows this reflection (although vague) amid occasional adrenaline injections. Because they are themselves two young people predisposed to photograph their surroundings without theming them in a dense way but using a youth communication language, a considerable part of the critic left them after their debut and despised them; although they do not intend to revolutionize anything, Henry and Ariel punctuate their features with sincerity of intentions.

More Project Power Movie info.

Power has defects and are not even hidden. It is more a case of script that meets the functionalities of each narrative passage, stretching its eventual purposes so that its concept fits in each scene, as in the case of elastic time. This, starting from a script that is closely linked to the notion of passing the minutes, ends up seeming to be a critical curmudgeon; it would be if the film did not take root in the temporal scheme. Still, the film sells itself as uncompromising and escapist fun, which is the basis of its cinema.

The cast has little to do. Rodrigo Santoro's Xerxes in 300 seems written by a refined dramaturgy close to his character here, who opens the film with a typical villain's speech until we realize that he is just an occasional henchman, far from a sphere of power. The good guys experienced by Jamie Foxx (Oscar by Ray ) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (from 500 Days with Her ) are typical of script manuals: the first justifies his actions with a history of family care, and the second is the typical rebel who love what you do. Both work very well in their stereotypes because they are great actors, not because the narrative material helps them.

The plot also does not contain originality (drugs tested on soldiers, power that does not change hands, a sick mother who needs an operation, etc ...), but as stated earlier, there is an awareness of her diminished place within the chain that moves the cinema . Power also has very nice and punctual special effects that speed up the plot but do not draw attention to you; a film that knows what it was produced for and under what conditions it will be consumed. Time passes without any major consequences and… the next slice of pizza comes.

Now you can watch Project Power online.