Boss Level review: Hulu’s time-loop movie hates the plot, over and over

Hulu’s new movie Boss level start with a self-conscious nod: Yes, you’ve seen time loop stories before. So does protagonist Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo). He has been woken up almost 150 times so far with a man swinging a machete at him. At this point, Roy can disarm his antagonist with ease, comfortably through the bullet line coming from outside the attacking heel, and jump from his window to survive the explosion that levels in his apartment each time. Roy tells this to the audience through sardonic, almost irritated narration – he’s tired of this shit and lives the same day over and over. This is most likely before Boss level ends, anyone watching it will also be tired of it.

One of the worst feelings about watching an action movie is the realization that the first fight scene is the best in store. Boss level desperately need that kind of novelty, because it’s so famous. There have been many time movies at this point, with several new ones hitting streaming services during the past calendar year, including the YA drama. The map of little perfect things, the romantic comedy Palm springs, and the micro-indie The obituary of Tunde Johnson. It generally becomes an overly familiar conceit. The best lies another genre twist on top of the central timeline, and uses the repetition to explore ideas and characters from all angles. Boss level did not really have it. It’s mostly a movie with designs on top action subdued by the actual action.

Directed by Joe Carnahan, Boss level was originally announced in 2012, not long after the release of Carnahan’s Liam Neeson survival film The gray. Then called Continue, the film languished for years until it finally went into production in 2018 for release in 2019, and was dropped by the distributor just two years later and picked up by Hulu. This may explain why the film feels so outdated.

The plot is blissfully skinny nonsense. Roy Pulver is a former Delta Force employee with an ex who is working on a mysterious technology project that is starting the timeline. Once it starts, Roy is targeted by a small army of assassins, each with their own cartoon-like and insensitive aesthetics. (A little man nicknamed Kaboom likes to blow up Roy; an Asian woman named Guan Yin uses a sword.) Given his hundred days of practice, he has managed pretty well to gain the upper hand, but just for a while – at 12:47, someone always kills him, and he starts again. One day he learns that there is a way to end the loop, and he tries to figure out how to reach his literal deadline.

In many ways, Boss level feels like a setback. Roy is an 80s action hero with a cooler jacket and a better hairstyle, and Frank Grillo is probably the closest thing we have to an action movie star in the form, with the misfortune of coming at a time where there is only not very large movies to fit his specific account. This one is full of macho humor, with a few jokes in poor taste (a joke about a whining man that Roy often kars with a “rape volume”), some that end up better (Roy takes offense when he has a encounter assassins who look just like him) and some who do not sound so funny, but kind of work in context (Roy’s shock and disgust of an assassin who claims to be using a gun owned by Hitler).

Six assassins prepare to shoot down Roy Pulver, who is sitting at a bar.

Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert / Hulu

It’s also a setback in the cast of Mel Gibson as his villain. His role is so thin that it could be played by anyone. Instead, it’s another entry in Gibson’s end of the 2010 slow step back to accepting the case, following his 2006 public battle with alcoholism that ended in an anti-Semitic tirade, and the undisputed charges of domestic violence directed at him in 2010, with another reported racist outburst.

Gibson’s role pulls the whole enterprise down, overshadowing the fact that Boss level‘s entire cast is already a strange combination of rarely used talent. Naomi Watts plays the thankless role of Roy’s ex, Jemma. Michelle Yeoh makes a small appearance as a sword fighting instructor in a scene removed from most of the film’s action. Ken Jeong appears as a bartender – the part is actually good unless you do not like Ken Jeong. Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski is also somewhere in the film; trying to spot him is a fun game.

None of this is well served Boss level‘s time loop, and it does not take long before Roy’s exhaustion with the rigamarole to stay alive in a world wants to convey to the audience. There’s no compelling mystery behind the timeline, and the pleasure of watching Roy sing and gain the upper hand over his many opponents only rises to the level of slightly entertaining, thanks to uninspired choreography and erased visual effects. The introduction of Roy’s son in the middle of the film, who does not know the identity of his father, does not really add an emotional substance, but it does add a scene where Roy has to spit out video games in an attempt to too related to him. maybe it’s worth it.

What is interesting ear Boss level is the random timing of it – not like it was fueled by almost a year of misery where every day feels the same, but how it is on the same streaming service as Palm springs, a movie that is fun to watch in part because it recognizes how familiar time loops are. Palm springs recognizes that a self-conscious time story needs something else to look beyond its own patterns, and places the energy in its central romance. If this were not the case, the result would be something like Boss level – a film that acknowledges that it is not the only time loop in the city, and wonders why we have it even in the first place.

Boss level is streaming on Hulu now.

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