Starring Frank Grillo with Mel Gibson as the main villain Boss Level is a pretty good action sci-fi film running with similar rules and structure as Groundhog Day with a time loop being the focus of the plot.

Grillo is Roy, a washed up soldier type who wants to spend all his time at a bar getting drunk or reunited with the mother of his child. When she gets murdered, Roy goes on the hunt for revenge as he battles a variety of assassins while the day resets every time he dies. Over the course of the movie Roy learns to overcome the challenges he’s presented with, eventually beating the baddies and reaching the conclusion to the story.

The Groundhog’s Day similarities are easily seen, from the time loop to how he goes through a few different attitude changes (determination, giving up, trying his best to do the right thing and a few others). Boss Level has a sense of humour of it’s own and while not the laughing crazy kind of funny it had some clever bits.

As an action movie it was quite good and the time loop sci-fi thing has been done before but not with so much death. It manages to be familiar yet original.

Apart from a character select opening, infinite replays of the day and the excessive violence of the enemies there’s not much that connects this movie to video games. The conclusion doesn’t really give anything video game related either, video games seemed like an excuse for the repeating the day but the plot explains that so I had to ignore that it was technically a video game movie. The title Boss Level also links it to video games but the title makes no sense

A pretty good movie all things considered with a nice sound track. Probably worth at least one watch but not really a family film.

A warning for anyone who doesn’t like cliffhanger endings, this film has one.