Movie Review: Boss Level

Anybody that's played a story-driven video game before knows the particular brand of grueling pain that comes from being stuck on a level for an exorbitant amount of time. Despite figuring out, if not completely mastering the early stages, there's a single foe or series of enemies that needs to be vanquished in order to move on in the story that you simply can't beat even after hundreds of run-throughs. Joe Carnahan's Boss Level takes this video game staple and applies it to a sci-fi action movie about an ex-solider (Frank Grillo) who gets stuck in a time loop where he's being hunted by a group of assassins hired by a mysterious evil weapons company head/retired Army colonel (Mel Gibson) after he becomes aware of a piece of time travel technology that his estranged wife (Naomi Watts) was working on, but abandoned once she realized what her employers were intending to use it for.

When it comes to applying video game mechanics to a movie, Boss Level does the best job of any film since Hardcore Henry. Through Grillo's generally cocky attitude and liberal hurling of smartass quips while easily blowing through the portions his character has rolled through dozens of times and increasing feeling of hopelessness once he reaches the stage that he can't get past, Carnahan nails the deeply conflicting attitudes that exists in the player's mind while navigating a difficult portion of a game as well as the aggravating cycle of monotony that comes with having no choice but to try and achieve the same goal over and over again. As simple as this filmmaking/storytelling approach may seem, there's a plethora of failed video game adaptations that have been released in the past that have demonstrated that it's extremely easy to butcher the translation between the two not overly different mediums, so seeing a film accurately illustrate the player's mindset and unbreakable repetition that exists within the game itself is a feat worthy of celebration and admiration.

Adhering so closely to the structure of a video game does however provide some limitations that put a cap on the overall quality of Boss Level. While Grillo's reliably gruff charisma prevents the actual story from feeling overly monotonous, the replaying the same level hundreds of times plot device means there's a limit to what Carnahan can do with the action scenes themselves. Slightly different versions of the same scenarios/deaths are forced to be looped for roughly an hour straight and it's not until the final act when new portions of the level are introduced that Carnahan really gets cooking with a badass swordfight and John Wick/Atomic Blonde-esque stairwell gun/fist fight that demonstrates the peak of Grillo's action hero powers. As faithfully-executed and entertaining as Boss Level is, the heightened electricity that's present in the latter stages of this film shows that Carnahan could've made an even better movie if he dropped that the replaying of the same sequences that the time loop narrative device requires and just made a balls out affair that applied the manic atmosphere of Smokin' Aces to a video game-style action movie. Still, it's great to see Carnahan gracefully return to the director's chair after a nearly 7 year layoff and deliver the first notably solid R-rated actioner since last August's Project Power.         

Grade: B