Eliminators (2016)

Eliminators (2016)

 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Stu Bennett, Daniel Caltagirone, James Cosmo, Ty Glaser, Olivia Mace, Stephen Marcus, Nick Nevern, Lily Ann Stubbs
Director: James Nunn
Action Director: Tim Man

 

The year 2016 was an especially busy year for Scott Adkins, him having no fewer than eight movie roles that particular year. The biggest movie he showed up in was as one of Mads Mikkelson’s goons in the MCU blockbuster Doctor Strange, while he had smaller roles in movies like Criminal (with Kevin Costner and Ryan Reynolds) and The Brothers Grimsby (with Sacha Baron Cohen). He had non-fighting roles in the suspense-thriller Home Invasion and the 13 Hours knock-off Jarhead 3: The Siege. Only three of those movies really gave Adkins a chance to show off his martial arts skills, being Hard Target 2; Boyka: Undisputed; and this one.

Adkins plays Martin Parker, a mild-mannered widower who’s raising his eight-year-old daughter, Carly (Lily Ann Stubbs), while making a living as a security guard somewhere in London. One day, a trio of hooligans break into his house looking for a stash of cocaine, beating Martin silly with aluminum baseball bats. The joke’s on them: they got the wrong address. However, as Martin has seen the ringleader’s face, they decide to off him anyway. Martin switches into (heh) Eliminator-mode and dispatches all three of the ruffians with killer efficiency, after which he passes out from blood loss.

Parker wakes up in a hospital, handcuffed to his hospital bed because he’s now being accused of murder. Apparently, British laws involving self-defense, trespassing and Stand Your Ground are either nonexistent or they have some crappy police officers working there. Martin is declared a public menace, his daughter is handed over to Social Services, and his face is plastered all over the news.

Before you can say History of Violence, two groups of people go into action. On one hand, some government agency in the United States—for whom Martin has apparently worked—gets word and sends one of their number, Ray (Daniel Caltagirone, of Outpost: Black Sun and Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks), to help get Martin—whose real name is Thomas—out of trouble. On the other hand, an arms dealer named Cooper (James Cosmo, of Highlander and Braveheart) also finds out and sends Europe’s greatest hitman, Bishop (professional wrestler Stu Bennett, credited as his wrestling moniker “Wade Barrett”), to ice Thomas. And thus begins the race against time for Mart…er…Thomas to rescue his daughter and find safety at the American embassy before Bishop gets to both of them.

Eliminators is a solid little action-thriller directed by James Nunn. Nunn had previously worked with Adkins on Green Street 3: Hooligans and would team-up with Adkins a few laters for One Shot. Nunn also worked with WWE studios, who produced this, on the fifth (!) and sixth (!!) entries in the Marine franchise, which is one movie that I never thought would birth so many sequels—see The Scorpion King for another film starring a professional wrestler that bore more sequels than anybody thought necessary. Nunn keeps the pace moving after the initial ten-minute introduction of our father-daughter pair, making sure that there is as much suspense as there is violent action. Despite having four parties of characters doing something at any given moment, Nunn wisely keeps the focus on the Adkins-Bennett cat-and-mouse chase and avoids any unnecessary convolutions in the plot.

While not a flaw per se, one of the strangest decisions that this movie makes is to cast Englishman Scott Adkins as an American…albeit one living in London. His American accent is passable, I guess. But with so many other movies in which he plays a British expat in the States, you’d think the filmmakers would just embrace the British setting and make him English. Whatever.

The action duties are once more handed over to Tim Man, making this his third collaboration with Scott Adkins (of ten overall) in the past decade. In my opinion, the best choreography comes early on when Thomas is escaping from the hospital and has to face two policemen armed with batons. There is some nice two-on-one choreography as Adkins has to fend off their simultaneous attacks until he can steal one of their weapons and unleash the hatred with the baton. It’s a quick scene, but it has a nice Jackie Chan-esque one-on-many vibe to it. There are a couple of quick fights that feel a bit more influenced by brawling and MMA.

In the final act, Adkins has two separate bouts with Stu Bennett. Bennett towers over Adkins and his wrestler body makes him an intimidating opponent, Adkins’s own musculature notwithstanding. Both fights are a mixture of Adkins’s trademark bootwork and ground fighting, mixing jiu-jitsu with professional wrestling throws and slams. Bennett is practically a man-mountain and repeatedly goes all Zangief on our hero, even throwing in a nice drop kick at one point. Adkins does his Donnie Yen-influenced jumping double-side kick in the second fight, while ending the first fight with a nice backflip-turned-drop kick as well. This is the best work that Adkins has done, but it’s done well and we always welcome a David-vs-Goliath martial arts fight, which this movie comes close to giving us.

This review is part of our "September of Scott" at It's a Beautiful Film Worth Fighting For.