‘They have an army. All I have is time...’
People love lone vigilante films. And people love time loop films. You can no doubt imagine where I’m going here. Boss Level combines two decidedly low brow forms of entertainment to produce something that is just that. Raw entertainment. Think John Wick or the oeuvre of Arnold Schwarzenegger and you are pretty close to landing on what director Joe Carnahan was going for here…
Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) is a grizzled former special forces agent who finds himself trapped in a time loop in which he is killed over and over again by mysterious hitmen. In support we have Mel Gibson as the big bad and Naomi Watts as the love interest, but this is Grillo’s film really, and he is pretty damn magnificent.
Working from his own script, Carnahan goes heavy on crowd pleasing genre staples such as ultra violence, one liners and pop culture references whilst ensuring that nothing here feels forced or tacked on. Grillo fully commits to the role in an all-action performance and pulls out a career best performance for an actor who is often relegated to the side lines. If Boss Level is anything to go by then Grillo has a bright future ahead as a fixture of the action movie scene.
Boss Level is funny, exhilarating and just loads and loads of fun. I adored it.