Boss Level (2021) - Take It A Comedy.

 

★★★☆☆

'Boss Level' is surprisingly more exhilarating than I expected. It's got stars like Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts, and long-time-no-see Michelle Yeoh but stars are never the point. The setup is, where a guy gets to die hundreds of times before he finally gets to find out why and how he's supposed to get out of the loop! That's obviously a bit cliched and senseless of course, but... wait, come to think of it, this sort of setup is not the point either. The point really is, the way it plays out those 'hundreds of deaths', which manages to get you gripped and make you laugh from time to time. Take it a comedy like 'Groundhog Day'. Take it easy. Then you're going to receive a 100-minute runtime joyful experience from an action film that you probably never thought would be capable of delivering so.

'Boss Level' truly feels like a video game as the title suggests, in which our hero keeps fighting and dying over and again till he learns enough from his past deaths to be able to finally K.O. the boss, meaning saving his family and stopping the end of the world. The ending is sort of unsatisfying, leaving us wondering still if everything's going to be fine and dandy in the end, but the whole ride is unexpectedly full of twists and turns and laughs. 'Boss Level' has been able to make deaths and killings look ridiculously funny, particularly the 'this is Guan Yin and Guan Yin has done this' act, which gives me quite a good laugh to tears for real. For an action comedy, the making sense of the story is no longer a concern. It is, instead, the choreography of the action and how effective it is to deliver laughs, at which 'Boss Level' is indeed competent in spite of Mel Gibson's Ventor's tedious blah, blah, blah during the break time!

In the film, there's a point where Roy (Frank Grillo) our hero decides to stop looking for a way out of the loop, and simply enjoy his last precious moment with his son while the world's ending, repeatedly. But then he feels like he's gotta do something to put an end to it once and for all. Like the endless loop Roy's facing, we've been stuck here in Samsara, a shithole of sufferings if you will, for far too long to even realize there's such a thing! We have become it. It has become us. Sometimes we do feel like there's something wrong but instead of looking for a way out, we keep digging a way in to try to fix it, and wishing for a better, different loop next time around. But you know what, there won't be any 'better' or 'different'. There'll be just the same shit in disguise!