3 Short Paragraphs: Boss Level

 2021, Joe Carnahan (The Grey) -- download

OK, the title and connection to video games is a bit disingenuous, as if they had the idea (an idea I had as well) of exploring the repetitive nature of video game deaths, reloads and progression, but then decided to just go with the like-Groundhog Day cliché. In the end, it still works.

We begin with Roy, a special forces mercenary type, mid-loop. The movie accepts we have seen such time loop tropes before and just drops us directly into the event. Roy is explaining to us, as the narrator, about what is going on, and how he has already reached the blasé stage of time loops. Every loop people are trying to kill him, immediately after he wakes up from a one night stand and continuing all morning, with increasingly ridiculously comical assassin types all trying to take him out. I think this aspect was left over from the video game idea, as these killers all seemed very cartoony game villain. Roy doesn't seem all concerned about the why, but given that he usually only lasts about 22 minutes before dying doesn't help. Then he bumps into his son, a young boy who doesn't know Roy is his father, and the interruption to usual pattern extends the loop just that much longer. That's when Roy starts putting two and two together, that maybe his ex-wife who is mixed up in some rich guy's super science project, might have something to do with what he is experiencing.

He's right, of course, and Roy begins his learn-more-to-extend-the-loop-even-further stage of the movie until he actually does the Boss Fight. But really, Mel Gibson as the Boss Level was kind of weak, which would have been a great commentary on Cutscene Bosses, but beyond tropes and a bonding scene between Roy and his son, the whole connection to video games was dispensed with by then. Either way, the movie has a lot of fun with the loops and the characters, and was a very satisfying example of this kind of movie.