Every day ex-Special Forces soldier Roy Palver begins by fighting off all kinds of assassins: a big guy with a machete, a machine gunner in a helicopter, two beauties in a fast car, a virtuoso sword-wielding Chinese woman, a midget bomber and other psychopaths. And each time, Roy is invariably killed and ends up back in the same day. One day he discovers that his secret ex-wife is dead. Roy decides to get to the bottom of her death, and at the same time to find out how he himself can get out of this unbearable time loop.
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In recent years, the film industry has become very zealous in taking inspiration from the game industry, which has gained a lot of popularity. Projects based on popular video game franchises or so have come out in recent years in huge numbers. Even at the moment, things like “Monster Hunter,” the “Mortal Kombat” reboot, or at least even “Ancharted” with Tom Holland are getting ready for release. And not so long ago, “Protagonist” was supposed to be released, but now, alas, it has been postponed until 2021, just like everything else. But the new Joe Carnahan’s film “The Last Level” was released, and though in every way this film is much easier than “The Main Character”, it still gives a lot of positive emotions. And yes, I don’t even want to say the localization of the title for our market, because it sounds like something obscene.
Roy Pulver has had a very strange day which never comes to an end, no matter what the outcome may be for Roy. Though it is not necessary to guess about this very outcome, because at the end of the day Roy always dies in one way or another, but in the morning, suddenly, he finds himself again in this very day. After reclining the first couple of dozen times, and waking up again in his bed, Roy realized that he was caught in a time loop, and something had to be done about it urgently. Well, how urgently, that’s how you can, because to all the problems of the hero is added the fact that he is hunted by a crowd of hired killers, who are very successful in their task, at least the first hundred times…
I think it’s obvious to any interested viewer here that we have here another variation on the theme of the long-suffering “Groundhog Day”. A lot of variations have been released since 1993, and not all of them are worth seeing, but from the relatively recent ones I would mention “Edge of Tomorrow” and “Happy Day of Death”. But specifically in “The Last Level” they decided to kind of compile the usual concept with a video game theme. And even in spite of the fact that it succeeded only very tolerably, the movie is still definitely entertaining. It was kind of obvious even from the trailer, that we should expect a funny thrash and buzz, and we could even think of analogies with the reckless “Adrenaline”, where Jason Statham played the leading part in several parts. But in this particular respect, one might be a little disappointed, since the “Adrenaline” dylogy was absolutely driving almost throughout its entire run, and this very drive didn’t stop. In the case of “The Last Level”, however, some slack is certainly there, and certain episodes are simply repeated over and over again, albeit somewhere with a different variation that you gradually stop distinguishing anyway. But nevertheless the action here is done extremely well, and the local budget was clearly squeezed literally all the juice out of it. Yes, there is definitely a certain poverty of staging, but I did not always notice this fact.
Still, the film has a certain zest of its own that manages to hook you. Yes, there are frankly boring dialogues, and the same Mel Gibson, Naomi Watts or Michelle Yeoh have practically nothing to play here, they have a very modest level of participation, and the greatest monologue is given to Gibson only. But Frank Grillo was good and quite charismatic, especially when you consider the fact that he now and then gets into comic situations. In general, of course, the black humor in “The Last Level” is certainly sufficient and the motion picture fully copes with the task of entertaining the viewer. Besides, in the absence of high-profile blockbusters there are practically no fresher alternatives.
Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (69.1 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: Dolby Vision, HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles
English, German.
