Boss Level

“ We do mostly eighties-based retro side-scrollers. Double Dragon, Altered Beast, Street Fighter. We're purists, bro. Dedicated to video games' golden age. Analog or death. 8-bit is the shit.”

Making an excellent movie seems to be the recipe sought by all the American studios, but due to the desire to stay on the beaten path, most movies lose their impact and often their visual strength. In the same way the mix of genres can be an excellent idea if it is well enough dosed. Boss level, Joe Carnahan's new film based on a screenplay he co-wrote with Chris Borey, Eddie Borey shows that the director of Narc (2002), Smokin' Aces (2007), The Grey (2012) and Stretch (2014) has lost none of his visual strength and still knows how to surprise us.

In Boss Level, trapped in a time loop that constantly repeats the day of his murder, former special forces agent Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) discovers clues about a secret government project that could unravel the mystery of his untimely death. Not only will he have to figure out how to extricate himself from this dangerous situation, how to ensure that neither his ex-wife nor his son are murdered, but above all how to prevent the earth from being destroyed by the machine that put him in this surreal situation. Through its scenario Boss level turns out to be the perfect mix of Groundhog Day (1993), Matrix (1999) and John Wick (2014), while also paying homage to the video games of the 80s (Street Fighter II, Double Dragon, Altered Beast, Defender, Pac-man, Galaga...).

From the very first minutes of the film, which not only plays the music of a video game but also plunges us directly into a video game with its share of various bad guys and a final boss to eliminate, Colonel Clive Ventor (Mel Gibson). The non-stop action of the film follows Roy Pulver whose life seems worthy of a video game and in which every mistake leads him to die and start his day over again. While searching for the many clues and confronting many enemies, he remembers each of his days repeating what will be useful to him to defeat many professional killers but also to learn how to fight with a sword to confront a killer as sulphurous as dangerous.

Joe Carnahan's previous films have shown that he is not only an excellent screenwriter. Award winning Smokin' Aces, Death Wish (2018) and Bad Boys for Life (2020) testify to this, but also a gifted director for filming action scenes in which they put his actors at the center of the action and avoid the use of outrageous special effects. In the case of Boss level, we find actor Frank Grillo in the lead role and especially his best role to date. Accustomed to supporting roles in major American productions (Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016) or more modest (Warrior (2011), Homefront (2014), The Purge: Anarchy (2014), Beyond Skyline (2017), Jiu Jitsu (2020)) he proves to be perfect here and also at ease in very spectacular action scenes but also in dramatic or simply crazy scenes (like the one in the toilet where he is looking for a spy transmitter).

Joe Canahan's direction builds the film like a real video game in which Roy Pulver's numerous attempts clearly appear on the screen and in which we discover a real anti-hero ready to give the best of himself including dying many times to save his son or learning how to handle a sword with dexterity. The director can also rely on an excellent cast to bring his film to life. The cast includes Annabelle Wallis, Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh, Ken Jeong, Selina Lo and Mathilde Ollivier.

Boss level easily deserves to be among the best action films of recent years and we are therefore surprised to see that the distributor Entertainment Studios has abandoned this film which was however fortunate enough to be acquired by the platform Hulu (apartment at The Wat Disney Company) to be distributed next year directly in the United States. So we hope that this film will have a better distribution in France because it has everything to become cult.

Boss Level
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Produced by Joe Carnahan, Frank Grillo, Randall Emmett, George Furla
Screenplay by Chris Borey, Eddie Borey, Joe Carnahan
Story by Chris Borey, Eddie Borey
Starring Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh
Music by Clinton Shorter
Cinematography: Juan Miguel Azpiroz
Edited by Kevin Hale
Production company: Highland Film Group, EFO, Diamond Film Productions, MoviePass Films, The Fyzz, Ingenious, WarParty
Distributed by Hulu
Release date: 2021 (United States)
Running time: 100 minutes

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