Bullet Points: The Eliminator

There may be no greater goal among celebrities than to become a crossover star. I say that because in nearly every industry you will find actors, musicians, and athletes running around trying to release rap albums, starring in terrible movies, and attempting to be supermodels. So it was only a matter of time before MMA fighters from the UFC and other organizations would try to make the transition to the big screen. And as much as I would like to see Miesha Tate or Gina Carano on the cover of some smut magazine, there aren’t many MMA fighters who I am banging down the door to see in theaters.

Synopsis: Former cop and current speedboat racer Dakota Varley (MMA legend Bas Rutten) enters into a race that promises to pay the winner $250,000 but after the race is over and Dakota stands victorious, another contestant ends up dead and Dakota is drugged and forced into a different and even deadlier game. Rich bad guy Miles Dawson (Michael Rooker) enters Dakota Varley into a hunt to the death on a deserted island. Surrounded by killers from all over the world, Dakota now has to survive the other competitors and find the men who put him on the island.

• I did not expect that: Having the main character be an underground speedboat racer was a bit of a stretch. In fact, that may be the stupidest line of work in history. Whatever Varley experienced in his career as an LAPD cop has to be more useful to the plot of this movie than his days racing speedboats but it wasn’t until I saw his law enforcement history on the IMDB.com page that I even knew that he was a former cop. Maybe I didn’t pay close enough attention to the movie or maybe it was just mentioned in passing. Either way, I’m sure that the underground speedboat racing competitions have taken quite the hit since their champion racer went through all this business.
• The Race: Our introduction to Bas Rutten’s character and to the character of Michael Rooker is done through the race that was supposed to award Bas $250,000. What it really did was show a bunch of guy cruising around a lake in no special way while poorly ‘talking smack’ to one anther over an internal radio system. Rooker just watched from a distance with that evil look on his face as we were given possibly the worst on screen boat chase in movie history.
• Badass Bas: Now I know that Bas Rutten is a legend in the MMA world but someone who has never heard of him might just think that he looks similar to Jason Statham. My biggest problem with the movie was that Bas, while getting into multiple fights, never really seemed to win any of them. In fact, his buddy who he had teamed up with for survival reasons, saves his life in almost every situation. I, for one, would have liked to see bigger and better fight scenes from Bas. Whoever choreographed these scenes did not do Bas any favors.

• An Island of Killers: The speedboat racer finds himself on a island with several other forced competitors including a DEA agent, a Special Forces instructor, a prisoner, and a freedom fighter. I won’t get into my questions regarding the reasons for this competition (the rich guys weren’t doing the hunting themselves and there were no cameras posted for them to watch the killers) but let’s just say that the movie failed to make any of the killers into fun or interesting characters.
• First things First: After the killers are released to do their worst, Bas runs off to the nearest beach and begins building a raft! That’s in stark contrast to the guy who paints himself and starts murdering people, which was a really good plan, and it isn’t until someone steals Bas’s rope that he finally gives up on his idea to build a Huck Finn-like raft and escape the island.
• Better than Tindr: Bas may be stuck on an island, forced to kill others in order to survive, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t make a love connection and just maybe get a little tail.
• Eagle Eye Rutten: Bas uses a rifle with a red dot sight to pick off the pilot and cause a chopper to crash. How he saw the red dot from that distance in the light of day is just a couple more questions that came to mind. This movie would have made for a good 5 Questions for Chris the Brain!

• The Finale: If you’re a fan of action movies you’ve most likely seen Michael Rooker on multiple occasions. Most recently he’s been on The Walking Dead and as a recurring character in the Guardians of the Galaxy films. His career is higher now and it has ever been. But his history in the action genre probably would have led you to believe that he would have a final showdown with our hero in The Eliminator. It makes sense to have your hero and villain face off at the end, isn’t that what the viewers should have been left wanting after 90 minutes of watching? Well, I won’t spoil the ending for you but to say that the final showdown is downright dog shit would be a nice way of putting it.

The Verdict: If I had been looking for movies for our What Not To Watch series of articles then The Eliminator would have been a perfect fit. It’s bad in every way. It treats its star, who was an elite professional fighter, like he’s just another guy. He doesn’t get any good fight sequences in which he wins and his character has nothing interesting about him at all. The main villain isn’t scary or badass and his entire reason for doing what he is doing is just to get more money, which is lame. Unless you’re Bas Rutten, you probably shouldn’t watch this movie. I’m assuming that Michael Rooker has already forgotten all about it.  I just wish that I could forget that I watched it.