Hulu Originals: Boss Level (2020) - Reviewed

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Images courtesy of Hulu

Michigan based action movie writer-director Joe Carnahan, best known for Narc, Smokin’ Aces and The Grey as well as writing Bad Boys for Life, like many filmmakers working today, ran headfirst into the unexpected and uncharted hardships of COVID-19.  With his film Continue which originally fell apart in 2012 before being reignited in 2017 as Boss Level, a kind of meta action-comedy riffing on the video game premise of a never-ending time loop ala Edge of Tomorrow, the film was finished in 2019 but financiers were unhappy and thanks to COVID bypassed a theatrical release and went straight to Hulu streaming as an Original movie in 2021.  Predating the theatrical release of Joe Carnahan’s action thriller Copshop by a few months, Boss Level seemed to fly under the radar of domestic cinephiles while being granted theater runs overseas.  Despite these setbacks, the film is an inspired little action-comedy gem spoken of the same breath as Groundhog Day by way of Nobody.
 
Retired Atlanta Delta Force soldier Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) is sick of his daily routine of being stuck in a time loop for half a year where he awakens, avoids an assassin trying to kill him and his girlfriend while in bed, then avoids a helicopter gunman blasting away at his apartment and finally must escape his apartment before it explodes, but it doesn’t end there.  Soon as he dies, rinse repeat.  Sometimes he’ll wander off to the bar to get drunk only to be found, killed and start all over again.  Prior to this time warp, he met up with his estranged wife Jemma (Naomi Watts) for a job interview at Dynow Labs only to uncover a secret project being sought after by the nefarious company head Colonel Clive Ventor (Mel Gibson).  As he navigates his way through assassins, swordswomen and bodyguards, he makes some time along the way for his son Joe (Rio Grillo). 

 
A star-studded $45 million action-comedy with numerous special effects set pieces and numerous cameos including but not limited to Ken Jeong, Annabelle Wallis, Will Sasso and Michelle Yeoh, Boss Level is a screwy, snarky and subversive Joe Carnahan effort that praises and lampoons the cliches of the action video game concept.  With a cantankerous protagonist tired of replaying the same level over and over again, absurdly over the top kills and battles and a cartoonish villain as the final boss, the film posits itself nicely alongside the John Wick movies and the aforementioned Nobody with its intentional swan dives into sensory overload.  Visually the film looks slick and splendid in 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen by Copshop cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz and District 9 composer Clinton Shorter’s electronic score adds a serviceable amount of action soundtrack cliches for meta comic effect.

 
Primarily Frank Grillo’s show with Mel Gibson coming in throughout to torment him, Grillo imbues the film’s hero with that of an intoxicated exasperated estranged father figure whose life is in shambles already before the time loop even came into play.  Mel Gibson has loads of fun playing the villain popping in and out of the hero’s life at random with the slightest of ease ala Lee Woo Jin from Oldboy.  Naomi Watts is debatably the most overqualified actress cast in this thing, but she has ample fun playing the stock character sexy mad scientist with a thuggish boss.  Most of the rest of the cast of cameos come and go in one ear and out the other, though Will Sasso makes a striking turn as an action heavy.

 
A cherished project by the director which suffered the fate of being dropped, shopped around and finally picked up by Hulu, the expensive film intended for theaters before industry shuffle and COVID dumped it on streaming is currently the point of contention between Hulu and Blumhouse Productions who sued Hulu for breach of contract with ongoing cease and desists being issued against the streamer for showing it.  There’s also a slightly different ending tacked on by Blumhouse different from the Amazon Prime version released in England which also furthered their lawsuit.  All things considered, it is nevertheless a fun distraction goofing on the cliches of videogame lore and those ruts we get stuck in as we near the final Boss Level. 

 
Yes it comes right on the heels of Shawn Levy’s Free Guy written by Matt Lieberman and frequent videogame movie nerd Zak Penn and even that film debatably could be tied to Steven Spielberg’s divisive and at times plodding Ready Player One.  But Frank Grillo and Mel Gibson breathe some life into the concept, Joe Carnahan’s action sensibility is perfect for the material and for all of its setbacks in preproduction and post-production, his long gestating labor of love finally got to have its say in the movie world irrespective of whether or not most people saw it on the small instead of the big screen.

--Andrew Kotwicki