Press R to restart – Review of Day of the Trigger with Mel Gibson and Frank Grillo

The Russian name refers to the more understandable Groundhog Day, in which the hero of Bill Murray was also forced to relive the same day over and over again – there, however, there were an order of magnitude less explosions and chases. But the original name Boss Level just clearly enters the territory of video games, to which for some reason the authors have become attached. The anchoring is pretty diligent: the credits are stylized like retro games with pixelated fonts and images, and the film shows the “choice” of the character at the very beginning. Roy himself also mentions that he feels like the hero of the game, and each of his deaths is accompanied by a small “load” with a spinning wheel in the center of the screen. Later, however, you can find out the true essence of this “download”, but some kind of binding to the authors still succeeded. Nevertheless, it is absolutely unclear why this was done.

A strange and interesting nuance is that Roy, by his own admission, is not exactly a fan of spending an evening at the console or PC in the next skating rink. And given the fact that the narration is conducted in his name, the meaning of this stylization is finally lost. The most interesting thing is that the binding could still be done organically in the second half of the film – but more on that later.

“Trigger Day” is an honest “beshka” who is not shy about her origin. From the very first frames, the film is filled with insane action: here Roy wakes up from the blow of a machete, which almost blows his head off. Then he dresses quite casually, deftly dodging the attacker (the adversary with the machete has not disappeared anywhere), brews a cup of coffee and in the end deftly pushes the enemy under fire from the minigun – a helicopter has just arrived successfully outside the window. Roy himself casually jokes that he has done all this more than a hundred times, therefore, with his eyes closed, he kills the shooter with a well-aimed knife throw, after which, correctly pauses, he walks past the shots to the sofa to take a photo of his ex. Soon the alarm clock will sound on his wristwatch, and the former special forces soldier will not only dodge the helicopter that crashes into the building, but will also drop out in time through the window – straight onto the truck that can soften the fall. For everything about everything – something about five minutes.

At such moments, the film really resembles a conditional Hotline Miami, when the level has already been studied inside and out, and all actions are performed almost automatically. And if the film had such a pace with rare short explanations, it probably would have coped with its task. Alas, there is a big but, whose name is flashbacks.

The fact is that after a furious (albeit low-budget) scene filled with action with shootings, car chases and an indispensable exploding helicopter, the hero begins to remember what happened the day before he got into the loop. Memories are not only drawn out by themselves, but also accompanied by the same mournful monologue of the hero. Thanks at least the “highlights” of the best deaths from the previous cycles stuck – you can enjoy the fact how a special forces soldier is dragged along the street, pierced by a harpoon, or blown up with a sticky bomb attached to the jacket.

“Trigger Day” regularly changes the pace, jumping from insane action with chopping off heads to inferior rum, and from melodrama (yes, there is even such a thing!) – back to rampant madness with pulling teeth with pliers. There is always a feeling that the screenwriter simply did not understand what to do with the material: the hero now and then loses motivation in order to find it again, spends a bunch of “attempts” on strange decisions and, in general, does not behave like the smartest guy in the world. Of course, no one expects a brilliant deduction from an action hero, but at his best moments Roy is able to unpleasantly surprise even those who are not used to looking for logical holes in the plots of films.

Another omission may seem to be the lack of disclosure of the secondary villains of history, namely, the hired killers who chase the special forces over and over again. To find fault with this seems like a stupid idea: the fact is that there is simply not enough time to reveal them – not on-screen, but internal. How can you reveal those whom you see literally a couple of seconds before your own (or their, if you’re lucky) death? However, one of the film’s best jokes, terribly politically incorrect, sounds exactly at the moment of the dialogue between Roy and one of the pursuers.

Finally, it is worth saying a few words about the meaning of the picture. Once again, Hollywood tells a story about the value of family and that it’s never too late to become the best version of yourself. The latter refers literally to Groundhog Day, while the former refers to just about any contemporary American mainstream film. In the second half of the picture, the hero, for example, spends almost fifty “attempts” to get to know his son better, whom he has hardly seen before. Here, by the way, the previously promised connection to games kicks in: in order to establish a bond with his son, Roy learns to play Street Fighter II and other retro games, understanding the essence of the cherished “Continue?” and the concept of restarts in video games. If it was here that the warrior had said for the first time that his whole life resembled a game, it would not have been possible to find fault with the “game” logic. Alas, in reality everything is completely different.

However, one should not write off the Day of the Trigger at all. Nevertheless, this is a daring action, albeit interrupted by flashbacks and unnecessary inserts – at the best moments the local drive can easily grab the viewer by the scruff of the neck and shake or cause laughter with another “black” joke with the ridiculous death of Roy. Feelings are similar to those that you experience, stupidly dying in the same Hotline Miami.