Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Frank Grillo, Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, Michelle Yeoh
Intro:
...this is Fun with a capital F...
Who would have thought back in 1993 that Harold Ramis’ comic masterpiece Groundhog Day would end up pretty much kick-starting an entire cinematic sub-genre all on its own? That film so ingeniously and engagingly utilised the concept of a “time loop” – whereby the central character is forced to relive the same experience again and again and again, while maintaining the knowledge learned each time – that it has inspired filmmakers across genres of all stripes and colours to give the same concept a crack. From Edge Of Tomorrow and Happy Death Day to Naked, Premature and Palm Springs, the concept has been goosed to varying levels of originality and effectiveness. Enter Boss Logic, the latest bone-cracker from cerebral action man Joe Carnahan (Narc, The Grey, The A-Team), which applies the idea to a series of masterful John Wick-style set pieces, while also taking it into areas of surprising emotional resonance.
The brilliantly named Roy Pulver (an astonishingly ripped and very likeable Frank Grillo, who continues to cement his status as an emerging top-tier action hero) wakes up every day with an assassin’s machete crashing towards his skull. From there, it gets worse, as the hard-hitting former Delta Force operative is relentlessly pursued by a helicopter gunship and then stalked by a crew of colourful paid killers that could have smashed out of the director’s nutty 2006 effort Smokin’ Aces. As Roy responds to his predicament with amusingly world-weary black humour, the question of why it’s all happening slowly starts to impinge on the blood spray and high impact action. It’s all to do with Roy’s ex-girlfriend Jemma (surprise choice Naomi Watts admirably gets into the spirit of things), a high level scientist working with a sinister military type (a scenery chewing Mel Gibson, who really shines in a Christopher-Walken-in-Pulp–Fiction style dialogue sequence) on some kind of time refracting device that could either be the saviour or the end of the world itself. High stakes indeed…
Jumping effortlessly from the dour and super-serious (Narc, The Grey) to the cartoonish and silly (The A-Team, Stretch, Smokin’ Aces), Joe Carnahan has an absolute ball with Boss Level (which he co-wrote with original scenarists Joe and Eddie Borey), executing a rat-a-tat-tat barrage of hilariously over-the-top kill scenes that take full advantage of the hey-let’s-see-that-again mechanics of the plot. But Carnahan also stays on top of the film’s snaking narrative, keeping in line with its internal logic with aplomb, while also hitting a few unlikely grace notes as Grillo’s wise guy arse-kicker uses the time loop not just to solve the film’s central mystery, but also to rectify his failings as a father. Yep, that might sound lame, but trust us, it works. And so does Boss Level as a whole. The very definition of an intelligently elevated B-movie, this is Fun with a capital F, boasting inventive plotting that doesn’t skimp on thoughtfulness, funny dialogue, and lit-fuse action scenes that are as hilarious as they are thrilling. Yep, Boss Level is next level.
