Boss level analysis: Hulu’s time loop movie hates its plot, indefinitely

New Hulu movie Boss Level starts with a self-conscious nod: Yes, you’ve seen looping stories in the past. The same happened with the protagonist Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo). He has woken up almost 150 times with a man swinging a machete at him. At this point, Roy can easily disarm his opponent, casually wander through the volley of bullets from the attack helicopter outside and jump out of his window to survive the explosion that always destroys his apartment. Roy tells the audience this through a sardonic, almost irritated narration – he is tired of this shit, living the same day indefinitely. It is very likely that before Boss Level ends, whoever is watching will be tired too.

One of the worst feelings when watching an action movie is realizing that the first fight scene offered is the best in the store. Boss Level he desperately needs that kind of novelty, because it’s so familiar. There have been many time loop films at this point, with several new ones coming to streaming services over the past year, including the drama YA The map of perfect little things, the romantic comedy Palm Springsand the micro-indie Tunde Johnson’s obituary. It is becoming an overly familiar concept in general. The best ones put another gender twist at the top of the central loop of time, using repetition to examine ideas and characters from all angles. Boss Level don’t really have that. It is mainly a film with exaggerated action designs that are hampered by the real 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 grey. So called Continue, the film languished for years until it finally went into production in 2018 for a release in 2019, only to be discarded by its distributor and acquired by Hulu two years later. This may explain why the film looks so old.

The plot is a happily thin absurdity. Roy Pulver is a former Delta Force agent with an ex who works on a top-secret technology project that starts the time loop. As soon as he starts, Roy is the target of a small army of assassins, each with his own caricatural and insensitive aesthetic. (A little man nicknamed Kaboom loves to blow up Roy; an Asian woman named Guan Yin uses a sword.) Given his more than 100 days of practice, he was very good at getting an advantage, but only for a while – at 12:47 pm, someone always kills him, and he starts again. Then, one day, he discovers that there may be a way to end the cycle and tries to figure out how to exceed his literal deadline.

In many ways, Boss Level it looks like a setback. Roy is an 80s action hero with a nicer jacket and a better haircut, and Frank Grillo is arguably the closest thing we have to an action movie star in that mold, unfortunate enough to arrive in a moment where there just aren’t that many great movies to suit your private account This one is full of macho humor, with some bad taste jokes (a joke about a crying guy that Roy often steals cars that screams “rape volume”), some that they fall better (Roy is offended when he encounters an assassin who looks just like him) and some who don’t sound so funny, but kind of work in context (Roy’s shock and disgust for an assassin who claims to use a weapon owned by Hitler).

Photo: Quantrell D. Colbert / Hulu

It is also a setback in the choice of Mel Gibson as his villain. Its role is so weak that it could be played by anyone. Instead, it is yet another entry into Gibson’s slow journey back to acceptance as an actor in late 2010, following his public struggle against alcoholism in 2006, which ended in an anti-Semitic speech, and the indisputable accusations of domestic violence directed at him in 2010, involving another racist speech.

Gibson’s role drags the entire company, overshadowing the fact that Boss Levelthe entire cast of is already a strange montage of badly used talents. Naomi Watts plays the thankless role of Roy’s ex, Jemma. Michelle Yeoh makes a small appearance as a swordfighting instructor in a scene away from most of the action in the film. Ken Jeong appears as a bartender – that part is really good, unless you don’t like Ken Jeong. Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski is also somewhere in the film; trying to locate it is a fun game.

None of this is well served by Boss LevelRoy’s time loop, and it doesn’t take long for Roy’s exhaustion with the rule of staying alive in a world trying to kill him, to be transferred to the public. There is no compelling mystery behind the time loop, and the pleasure of seeing Roy being wise and having the edge over his many opponents only increases to the level of moderate entertainment, thanks to uninspired choreography and faded visual effects. The introduction in the middle of Roy’s son’s film, who doesn’t know his father’s identity, doesn’t really add any emotional substance, but it does add a scene in which Roy has to speak video game jargon in an attempt to relate to him. maybe it’s worth it.

What It is interesting about Boss Level it is your accidental moment – not in the way it arrived after almost a year of misery fueled by a pandemic, where every day seems the same, but in how it is inserted in the same streaming service that Palm Springs, a film that is partially fun to watch because it recognizes how familiar time loops are. Palm Springs recognizes that a self-conscious time-loop story needs something more to consider beyond its own standards and places that energy in its central novel. Otherwise, the result would be something like Boss Level – a film that recognizes that it is not the only time loop in the city and wonders why we even have them in the first place.

Boss Level It is now broadcasting on Hulu.