Review: Eliminators

Widowed Scott Adkins lives in London with his daughter (Lily Ann Harland-Stubbs). The parking garage security guard’s boring life is disturbed by nightly home invaders, whom he lethally dispatches. It turns out that Adkins’ current life isn’t much like his former one, a life he has attempted to escape for the safety of his daughter. However, this recent violent scuffle leaves him exposed, and American arms dealer James Cosmo has an old score to settle with him. Cosmo deploys deadly European hitman Bishop (Wade Barrett, real name Stu Bennett) to rub Adkins out. Daniel Caltagirone plays Adkins’ old buddy Ray who tries to help.

 

Scott Adkins teams up with WWE Studios for this 2016 action film, which means a co-starring role for then-WWE Superstar (and now NXT commentator) Wade Barrett as the heavy. Directed by James Nunn (who later delivered Adkins’ enjoyable “One Shot”) from a script by Nathan Brookes (the WWE Studios sequels “See No Evil 2” and “12 Rounds 2: Lockdown”) and Bobby Lee Darby (ditto), the result is diverting enough for Adkins fans and probably a bit better than usual by WWE Studios standards too. My overall rating is more reflective of these standards than any overall scale of quality measurement.

 

An eerily quiet opener leads to some Adkins arse-kicking as he deals with some not very bright home invaders. It’s a fun kick-off, no pun intended. The plot is also relatively engaging, if not earth-shattering. Wade Barrett and his marvellous speaking voice are well-matched with Adkins here. In fact, he pretty much steals the show. That’ll be no surprise to WWE fans, as while he wasn’t the greatest ring worker (and injury prone), his promo skills were uniformly stellar despite fairly mediocre material at times during his run with the company as a wrestler (He now commentates for their NXT developmental brand). It's a shame then that his supposedly feared assassin character is more thuggish and actually kind of an idiot. Fellow villain James Cosmo – the film’s one ‘legit’ actor I suppose – is creepily avuncular as the feared gangster patriarch. Sadly, he’s in too few scenes to truly stand out. The worst performance by far comes from Daniel Caltagirone as Ray, who is just distractingly bad. As for our leading man, Scott Adkins gives one of his more solid performances here. He also probably fares best of the UK actors trying on American accents (only Barrett/Bennett gets to keep his natural accent of the main players), one of his better attempts actually. The action is quite good, if not quite as plentiful as one would like perhaps.

 

No world beater by any stretch, but diverting enough for a certain (quite limited) audience. Almost exclusively (softly) recommended to fans of the two leads. They’re better than the film they’re housed in, which is just good enough.

 

Rating: B-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chil...
Read more

Review: Cinderella (1950)

The story of poor young Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods), treated as a servant by her nasty stepmother (voiced by Eleanor Audley), and dismissed by her thoroughly rotten, ugly stepsisters. Her only friends are a group of mice, who are forever being menaced by a cat named Lucifer (or as I call him, Grumpy Cheshire Cat). The King (hoping to find a wife for his charming son) is throwing a ball and every available young woman is invited to attend, and Cinderella is most excited to go. However, her stepmother and stepsisters do all they can to prevent this from happening. But with help from the mice and one fairy godmother (voiced by Verna Felton) later, and Cinderella looks set to attend the ball. You know the rest, folks.   Lovely 1950 Disney animated movie from directors Clyde Geronimi ( “Peter Pan” , “Lady and the Tramp” ), Wilfred Jackson ( “Fantasia” , “Alice in Wonderland” , “Peter Pan” ) & Hamilton Luske ( “Pinocchio” , “Fantasia” , “Peter Pan” ), that is a bit t...
Read more

Review: Jinnah

The story of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Sir Christopher Lee) the politically moderate founder of Pakistan. A Muslim lawyer, Jinnah fought to form a separate nation from India for the Muslim minority, whilst Mahatma Gandhi (Sam Dastor) wished for India to stay united and proposed Jinnah as the new PM as a compromise. James Fox plays British viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Indira Varma plays Jinnah’s wife, and veteran bit player Vernon Dobtcheff plays a British dignitary.   Although Christopher Lee’s title performance received some critical notice and the actor himself was very proud of the work, this modestly budgeted 1998 biopic from director Jamil Dehlavi ( “Immaculate Conception” with Melissa Leo) and co-writer Farrukh Dhondy ( “Red Mercury” with Stockard Channing and Ron Silver) was largely ignored at the time and still very little-known today. Part of that is probably due to the poor marketing of the film, and difficulty in finding a distributor. It’s hard to get people to talk abo...
Read more