Individuals selected for their survival skills are kidnapped and airdropped onto a secure island where they are hunted by night and forced to fight until only one remains.

Former Pancrase and UFC champion Bas Rutten stars in The Eliminator, his second feature film after retiring from the world of professional fighting. This flick is B-grade all the way with bad acting, bad effects work, and a bad story. But its Survival-meets-Battle Royale premise and Rutten’s years of martial arts experience delivers a fair amount of brainless action for the indiscriminate (and otherwise bored) viewer.

The story concept of having people stranded in a secluded spot and hunted for sport is an old one that has been brought to film many times. Consider John Woo’s Hard Target (1993) with Jean-Claude Van Damme as the hunted and Wilford Brimley as the hunter. Or how about Ice-T running from Rutger Hauer in Surviving the Game (1994)? The most controversial, socially-conscious and admittedly intriguing version to date is Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) where students are dropped onto an island, each given a different weapon and are forced to hunt each other. Yet all of these films owe author Richard Connell a debt of gratitude for first bringing the concept to the masses in his short story, The Most Dangerous Game, first published in 1924.

The Eliminator is the latest film to draw on this idea, while attempting to bring martial arts action into the mix. Well-known actor Michael Rooker (Replicant) plays a sadistic millionaire who gathers fellow millionaires to an island for a little bet. Each person has selected a ‘contestant’ who has been kidnapped and dropped into a secure part of the island for a game of survival. The idea of starting the contest by tossing taser-zapped and half-conscious ‘contestants’ out of a plane with a parachute and no training on how to use one seems illogical. Most of the contestants would have been dead before the game ever started. Once on the ground, they have the choice of facing night-prowling hunters with guns or killing each other off first. The last man, or woman standing gets to live and their ‘sponsor’ gets a money prize and bragging rights.

What I like about this action film, which isn’t much, is that actors with genuine martial arts abilities and experience are in some of the leading roles. Dutchman Bas Rutten takes the action hero lead and certainly has the build, action chops and charisma for it, but comes up lacking in the acting department. His only strength in this regard is that everyone else acts worse, save for Rooker who settles on the standard, maniacal villain persona on a power trip. The script which presents such profound lines as, “I’m a freedom fighter….I fight for freedom” is beyond dumb. It only gets worse when Rutten and his pals wander around the exotic jungles of Florida joking and making out like they’re on vacation, rather than stuck in a life and death situation.

Stuntwoman Danielle Burgio (Daredevil, The Matrix Reloaded) plays the token babe who begins to drive a wedge between Rutten and his only buddy, played by the chiseled Paul Logan (The Ultimate Game). Rutten puts his years of Tae Kwon Do and submission-style martial arts expertise to use on surprisingly ineffectual hunters and a couple of meaty contestants, highlighted by a burley serial killer in face paint (Jamal Duff).

The action desperately needs to be good, because everything else stinks. The film is dominated by two things, budget CGI effects and amateur attempts at stylized action editing and camera work. The CGI never looks even vaguely real and is overused in the monotonous opening credits, wide shots of the island and shots of Rooker’s castle.

Some decent combat that mixes up Tae Kwon Do kicks, grappling locks, and good old fashioned boxing is seriously hindered by terrible editing and camera work. Every modern whiz-bang technique from speed variation to rapid cuts is tossed in with no apparent understanding of how to shoot a proper action sequence. In the end, the scenes are butchered and left for dead like most of the contestants.

What kills The Eliminator is the film’s ending that completely breaks down. For a film dealing with a life and death struggle for survival among skilled fighters, the end is surprisingly tame with little excitement or combat. The only minor highlight is Rutten’s tangling with a massive thug.

The Eliminator looks and feels like a TV movie of the week, but on a smaller budget. Unless you’re a diehard fan of Bas Rutten, who is definitely a talented fighter in real life, you’re better off waiting for another film with UFC-inspired action.

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