Project Power is a Netflix thriller about a drug that offers the taker five minutes having a superpower. The film cures Simon Morris of any interest in big, dumb action for the immediate future.
Simon Morris: The streaming service Netflix is in many ways a power for good, funding projects that might have otherwise not been made - Oscar-winner Roma, say, and the latest films by Martin Scorcese and Spike Lee.
But its heart is in rather less high-brow fare - the first movie contract Netflix signed was for five comedies by Adam Sandler. Its preference seems to be unsophisticated action films like Project Power.
In fact, I nearly didn't see it. An even bigger war spectacular from China called The Eight Hundred suddenly popped up at the last minute.
The pedigree of Project Power can best be described as "mixed".
In service to the undeniably B-movie story is a pretty good cast - Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx, the always reliable Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and an attractive up and comer called Dominique Fishback.
Dominique plays a troubled teen, trying to make a living by selling a drug called Power on the street.
Power, it says here, offers the recipient five minutes of a superpower - the only problem being, you're not quite sure which power you're going to get until you take it.
Could it be strength or invisibility? Could it be the ability to tie yourself in knots like a pretzel, or simply catching fire?
You're probably wondering if the pill taps into something innate in you? Or does it vary, depending on what time you take it?
Your problem is you're trying to make sense of it. Stop doing that.
Anyway, Robin, the troubled teen, runs into Art - Jamie Foxx - an ex-army man who's on a mission to find the people selling the drug Power in the streets of New Orleans.
For Art, this is personal, involving his daughter or something.
The villains aren't exactly hiding. They seem to be visible on every street corner.
And this enrages a cop called Frank - Joseph Gordon-Levitt - who's made it his mission - everyone in this film is on some sort of mission - to go and get the bad guys.
Complicating matters, and establishing that Frank has many layers of character - at least two - is the fact that Frank himself is a regular taker of Power.
Since he's up against temporarily souped-up villains who may suddenly become faster than a speeding bullet, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, Frank feels he's entitled to level the playing field.
Since most of the running time of Project Power involves set-piece action sequences where Art, Robin or Frank take on all manner of briefly super villains, you'd think there's no room for much actual plot.
Well, there is and there isn't. There's a bunch of stuff about Art trying to retrieve his kidnapped daughter, who turns out to be the source of Power's, er, power.
But there's never so much plot that it can't be summed up in a quick burst of exposition.
The bad guys - mostly white - are trying out the evil drug on poor folks in the streets of New Orleans - spot the real-life parallels?
And the bit about Art's daughter Tracy now having permanent powers has a real-life precedent too - a famous cancer patient called Henrietta Lacks whose DNA, I discovered, is the basis of most medical treatment today.
So while the movie Project Power is undoubtedly stupid - most of the plot development can be summed up in the words "Bam, Splat and Pow!" - the people making it are clearly not.
Directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman were responsible for the documentary turned reality TV series Catfish, which contributed a new word to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Once in a while, Joost and Schulman may slip something smart in for their own enjoyment, but Project Power is a film for paying the bills, not improving anyone's grades.
