Eliminators

I know how much you have enjoyed my past WWE Studios entries from me so I aim to please and bestow upon you today with a review of their 2016 direct-to-video release, Eliminators (trailer) . Martin Parker (Scott Adkins) is in a witness relocation program in England after his cover got blown in a string of off-screen events that resulted in his wife’s death. Now him and his daughter are living a new life overseas until one day a burglary break-in at his home a few years later results in him killing a few intruders and putting his face all over the news. This results in his original American crime boss he betrayed, Cooper (James Cosmo) rediscovering Parker’s whereabouts. Cooper sends Britain’s most lethal hitman known as Bishop (WWE’s Wade Barrett) out on a hit to finish Parker but this winds up in a nonstop a cat-and-mouse chase instead.

This is this first WWE film to my knowledge to have its guest starring wrestler no longer employed with the company by the time the movie released. Wade Barrett’s contract expired with WWE about a half year before Eliminators was released. I did not see much of any previews before seeing this film and was not expecting much out of Barrett since I recall him saying no more than five words as a forgettable henchman in his performance in a previous WWE film, Dead Man Down. WWE Studios had far more faith in Barrett here because the film sets him up as the deadliest assassin of all of Britain. He has a killer intro scene where he flawlessly takes out a gang without breaking a sweat, and he delivers all his dialogue with a flair of cunning that makes him look and speak the part. I was truly surprised at his big step up in performance in this film.

Scott Adkins is also on point with his role of the hero on the run. It was fun watching him try to break out of the hospital while cuffed to the bed because the film bizarrely sets him up as a vigilante who took the law into his own hands and paints Parker out as the villain instead. Luckily this does not last that long as the feds intervene and clear his name. However Bishop catches up to the feds and forces them to give Parker’s location to Bishop and the cat-and-mouse chase resumes with the duo engaging in a series of intense brawls throughout the film. A fun fight sequence in a sky lift had me cracking up, but their gritty, brutal brawls at a safehouse, docks and ultimately at a barn in their final clash had my adrenaline bumping in an old school 80s action movie kind of way.

I wish Eliminators had some kind of better way to wrap things up as its ending was so instantaneous and over before you knew it. That is my main gripe with it, other than a few other minor characters not being that well casted. It is the standard low budget, direct-to-video film from WWE Studios, but the production does a decent job at hiding its restrictions with clever cinematography and getting a lot out of practical effects instead of CG. This is explained well in the two extras on the BluRay. They are nothing that in-depth and total for about 10 minutes, but they breakdown the major fight sequences and shows how they pulled off a few of the key stunts while another extra interviews Barrett on his experience in the film.

Eliminators will not light the action genre on fire by any means, but it was a pleasant surprise and is a quick watch at 90 minutes. I would highly recommend it on a movie marathon night as a quick pallet-cleanser in the middle of your movie binging! I think this will be the last WWE Studios blog for awhile, because it looks like WWE started making their films available to rent on disc from Netflix again. I checked and they are carrying WWE’s latest action thriller starring Seth Rollins and Wesley Snipes in Armed Response!

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

3
12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Deck the Halls
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past