(A little man nicknamed Kaboom loves blowing Roy up an Asian woman named Guan Yin uses a sword.) Given his hundred-plus days of practice, he’s gotten pretty good at getting the upper hand, but only for a while - by 12:47 p.m., someone always kills him, and he starts again. Once it begins, Roy is targeted by a small army of assassins, each with their own cartoonish and insensitive aesthetic. Roy Pulver is a former Delta Force operative with an ex working on a top-secret tech project that initiates the time loop. This may explain why the movie feels so stale. Then called Continue, the film languished for years until it finally entered production in 2018 for a 2019 release, only to be dropped by its distributor and picked up by Hulu two years later. It’s mostly a movie with designs on over-the-top action that are undercut by the actual action.ĭirected by Joe Carnahan, Boss Level was originally announced in 2012, not long after the release of Carnahan’s Liam Neeson survival film The Grey. The best ones layer another genre twist on top of the central time loop, using the repetition to examine ideas and characters from all angles. It’s becoming an overly familiar conceit in general.

There have been many time-loop movies at this point, with several new ones hitting streaming services over the course of the last calendar year, including the YA drama The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, the romantic comedy Palm Springs, and the micro-indie The Obituary of Tunde Johnson.

Boss Level desperately needs that kind of novelty, because it’s so familiar. One of the worst feelings to have when watching an action movie is the sinking realization that the first fight scene on offer is the best one in store. It’s quite likely that before Boss Level ends, anyone watching it will be tired of it too. Roy tells the audience this through sardonic, almost irritated narration - he’s tired of this shit, living through the same day over and over again. At this point, Roy can disarm his antagonist with ease, casually stroll through the hail of bullets coming from the attack chopper outside, and leap from his window to survive the explosion that levels his apartment every time. He’s woken up nearly 150 times so far to a man swinging a machete at him. So has protagonist Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo). Hulu’s new movie Boss Level begins with a self-aware nod: Yeah, you’ve seen time-loop stories before.

The boss movie running time