'Boss Level' Trailer: Frank Grillo Is Trapped In A Time Loop Of Death And Assassins

Frank Grillo's day starts off like any other person's: wake up, drink coffee, avoid multiple assassination attempts. Or at least that's his character in the sci-fi action flick Boss Level, in which the Purge series actor stars as a man who finds himself living in an infinite time loop inhabited by a group of assassins out to kill him. Watch the Boss Level trailer below.

Grillo stars in Boss Level as Roy Pulver, a former soldier who wakes up one day to find himself trapped in a time loop where assassins attempt to kill him in increasingly gruesome and explosive ways. Roy has lived through this loop so many times that he's become jaded by the whole thing, though he's no closer to solving the mystery behind why he's stuck in the loop in the first place.

The film trailer plays like Groundhog Day meets Edge of Tomorrow meets Deadpool, with the sarcastic Roy often engaging in some witty banter with his killers before he dies horribly. Despite the film's title, however, it doesn't seem to have any relation to video games, though at first it comes off like a more violent version of Ryan Reynolds' upcoming Free Guy. According to writer/director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team, The Grey), the original script was called Continue and was written by two brothers, Chris and Eddie Borey, which Carnahan had been developing at 20th Century Fox as early as 2012. The project eventually morphed into Boss Level once Grillo and co-star Mel Gibson boarded in 2017, with Carnahan writing and directing.

"I thought it was very inventive and smart," Carnahan said in the production notes for the film. "But what I really loved about it was this idea of a guy who's been an absentee father and husband who, through a sci-fi plot twist, experiences a repeating moment in which — if he has enough attempts — he can right the wrongs he's done and redeem himself in the eyes of the people he loves. I started rewriting it, and I added what I thought was a crucial emotional core. Because without that, a movie like this would just seem like a gimmick. You'd think, 'Ok, the guy is resurrected every day, but to what end?' The movie needed higher emotional stakes."

Those stakes include his ex-wife, Jemma (Naomi Watts), and son, Joe (played by Grillo's actual son, Rio), whom he must rescue from the villainous Colonel Clive Ventor (Mel Gibson). Also starring in the film are Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians), Annabelle Wallis (The Mummy), Ken Jeong (Community), Will Sasso (The Three Stooges), Selina Lo (The Debt Collector), Meadow Williams (Den of Thieves), Rob Gronkowski (Super Bowl champion), and MMA heavyweights Rashad Evans and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson co-star.

Here is the synopsis for Boss Level:

Trapped in a time loop that constantly repeats the day of his murder, former special forces agent Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) uncovers clues about a secret government project that could unlock the mystery behind his untimely death. In a race against the clock, Pulver must hunt down Colonel Ventor (Mel Gibson), the powerful head of the government program, while outrunning skilled ruthless assassins determined to keep him from the truth in order to break out of the loop, save his ex-wife (Naomi Watts) and live once again for tomorrow.

Boss Level premieres on Hulu on March 5, 2021.