Boss Level

"It wasn't always like this. I was happy once. I really was. I had a woman I loved. But now I'm just pissed off!"

I do love a time-loop film but I fear the concept has reached the point of being over-done. 

Still, Boss Level gives us a very action heavy time-loop. Retired soldier Roy (Frank Grillo) spends every day being hunted down by a team of bizarre and ruthless assassins for reasons he doesn't understand. Over time he manages to evade death for longer and longer and then finally finds out what is responsible for the time-loop. 

The action here is really strong from the off with Roy being really tested. I like that the film opens with Roy having been in the time loop for some time so that much of the action is really heightened by the fact that Roy knows how to escape. It felt really fast and I was thinking that this is a great idea for a time-loop movie, where the lead character is continually pursued and has to solve what's happening amongst all this with no opportunity for a quiet sit down.

But then we get a flashback to the day before the time-loop which casually explains most of what is going on to everyone but Roy who might be a great fighter but struggles to put the clues together. The film also starts to explore Roy's relationship with the estranged mother of his child (Naomi Watts) and his tween son. This stuff is find and Grillo certainly does enough to make you route for his character but it all feels very tame next to the action stuff and actually doesn't add a great deal to the film. 

Eventually Roy works out that it's Mel Gibson's evil Colonel Ventor that wants to kill him and so the film gets a bit more direction and Roy has a proper mission to work towards. Gibson makes a decent villain here even if the character's intentions don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 

I had quite a few issues with the writing in this film. First was the fact that Roy conveniently meets both a security expert and a master swordswoman in a Chinese restaurant he likes to hang out. I would accept this shortcut once but the second time felt like too much of an co-incidence. There's also a strange thing going on in that the assassins are a range of wild characters who feel like something out of a video game and at one point Roy's son has a pack of cards which appear to show the assassins. I assumed this point would be picked up on again later but it wasn't- it felt to me like there were leftovers from a previous iteration of the script where Roy was inside a video game. 

I wasn't too keen on the ending either. It feels like it ends a scene too early with Roy taking a huge risk to save the day and we don't get any sort of resolution to this. I couldn't really work out why the film needed to do this- it showed before the time loop so there's no reason it couldn't show us what happened after the time loop either. I often quite like an ambiguous ending but I just couldn't see the merit of it here.

The film is at it's best when it's an action film and loses it's way a little when it goes too sentimental. Frank Grillo makes it very watchable however and it's largely down to his performance that leads you to route for the main character.