The time-loop genre has had a bit of a resurgence over the last few years, with films like Palm Springs and Happy Death Day showing that there is plenty of lifeblood left in the concept. What easily could have been a too-good-to-attempt-to-do-better affair with Groundhog Day has instead has become a point of inspiration for filmmakers across a number of genres. The action genre seems like a natural place to have some fun with the concept, and, in fact, has already resulted in at least one entertaining installment with the Tom Cruise-starring Edge of Tomorrow. But Boss Level, a new Hulu original directed and co-written by Joe Carnahan, fails to leave any sort of mark within the genre other than make it more meat-headed.
Of course, the movie wants you to think it has more on its mind than an endless string of uninspired action sequences and witless one-liners. In Boss Level, retired special forces soldier Roy Pulver, like Phil Connors and Tree Gelbman and Nyles & Sarah before him, is stuck reliving the same day over and over again until he learns a lesson and/or solves a problem, and the film revels in teasing the giant sci-fi conspiracy that's behind his predicament. But it becomes clear early on that the nuts and bolts of the film's plotting aren't terribly interesting, a fact the movie sometimes seems to agree whenever it brushes aside the big questions it poses to succumb to its baser instincts.
How base? Well, Mel Gibson plays the movie's villain, which means he mostly he just sits around smoking cigars, complaining about liberals and making borderline racist asides. But let's put a pin in Mel for the moment and look at the bigger picture. Boss Level stars Frank Grillo as Roy, who wakes up every morning with a man swinging a machete at his head and an attack chopper bearing down on his apartment. Having survived these obstacles a hundred times over already, Roy is able to effortlessly fight off the assassins and escape the building while casually getting dressed and drinking his morning coffee. But more assassins always come, and, shortly after noon, he always ends up dead, only to wake up and do it all again the next day. It's possible his time-looping has something to do with a Large Hadron Collider-like thing his scientist ex-wife (Naomi Watts) is busy working on. (Ya think?!) But to solve the mystery and get himself unstuck from time, Roy is going to first have to find a way to live long enough to piece together all the clues. Grillo, an action B-movie star still most known for his work as a recurring Captain America antagonist the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has the grizzled face and rock-hard body to be an effective leading man in these kinds of films. But if you're giving him substandard fight scenes and loading him up on voice-over exposition, as Boss Level does, you're not exactly playing to the guy's strengths.
The more the plot unravels the more it becomes apparent that it's just absolute nonsense. Gibson has Watts building a time machine for reasons that are … apparently evil but never really explained, so Watts sticks a piece of Grillo's hair in the machine, which ties his "mass" to that day in the timeline, so that Grillo has as many chances as it takes to make it to the lab in time and save her life before the machine destroys the space-time continuum and causes the world to end and … OH MY GOD JUST GIVE ME FRANK GRILLO PUNCHING PEOPLE. By this point, I think it's fairly obvious that the less time-loop movies attempt to explain the time loop, the better off they are. In Groundhog Day, it's a cosmic lesson that never needs addressed. In Palm Springs, it's a weird magic cave — that's all we need to know — and then it's on to the funny stuff. But Edge of Tomorrow falls apart in its third act when it starts trying to explain things, and Happy Death Day's sequel loses a bit of the first movie's charm when it doubles-down on the science of what's happening. Boss Level will occasionally lean hard into the science-fiction mystery that is supposedly driving the story, which only serves to undercut the movie whenever it starts to approach being watchable as a straight-forward action film. Yet it often stumbles there too by focusing more on Grillo's machismo and tough-guy posturing instead of things like fight choreography or action-sequence pacing. Essentially, it tries to be two different films — one high concept and story driven, the other a lowbrow beat-'em-up — and ends up failing at both of them.
Then there's the overall casting, which somebody could probably write a several-thousand-word thesis on. We've got Grillo, still on a career upswing as a reliable low-to-mid-budget-action-movie guy. We've got Watts and Michelle Yeoh in tiny, thankless parts beneath their considerable talents, which probably says a lot about the struggles of middle-aged women in Hollywood and the roles available to them. We've got Will Sasso and Ken Jeong, who I guess carry some kind of cult-comedian cred but stand out like sore thumbs in a movie like this. (Are they friends with Carnahan? It kind of feels like it!) Football player and noted lunkhead Rob Gronkowski shows up for some reason. And then there's Mel, still banished from the A-list, playing an empty, slimeball role that's defining trait appears to be to remind us of why he's stuck playing these kind of parts in the first place. Does he have no other option than to take a role like this, or did he take it just to spite everyone? It's honestly hard to say.
The movie falters in lots of other places as well. The jokes just don't work. A swordswoman assassin nearly breaks the fourth wall to dramatically announce her kill every time she murders Roy. It's supposed to make her cool, but it really just makes her awkward. A lot of Roy's breakthroughs are built on incredible coincidences, like the fact that he's able to defeat the swordswoman by taking daily lessons from a sword-fighting champion (Yeoh) who just happens to be at the bar Roy likes to frequent that day and who the other customers somehow recognize. There's also a tech-security guy at the same bar who can help identify and locate the tracking device Roy suspects is hidden in his body. (This place has everyone a time-traveling badass needs!) It seems like all time-loop films require the lead character to learn some kind of personal lesson, and Roy's journey to becoming a better dad feels perfunctory and half-written.
I know Carnahan is better than this because he made The Grey, which remains one of the best action-thrillers of the 2000s. That film features Grillo alongside star Liam Neeson, who Grillo's character actually takes a cheap shot at in Boss Level. It's a bizarre, out-of-place moment that reeks of testosterone-fueled bullshit. Which, honestly, does a fair job of summing up the entire movie.
