Eliminators has Adkins as an American living in England (?) who kills two home invaders, and is held by the police in protective custody to potentially face charges. Turns out he was in witness protection there, as a crime boss that he took down wants him dead. The twist: the crime boss is his father in-law and grandfather to his daughter. To kill him, the crime boss calls in the best, Stu Bennett. At the same time, the crime boss is trying to get Adkins daughter, so it's a deadly game of cat and mouse. Will Adkins make it?
This is good enough to get you to the church on time I think. The whole Adkins playing an American in England makes no sense, because he's a Brit, but director James Nunn, who we also saw in One Shot, covered in the same Adkins Fest, also had him play an American, so maybe he learned that from Isaac Florentine and is leaning into it. Anyway, on top of that, we also have the same plot device of Adkins being a widower single dad who has a kid that gets kidnapped, though to be fair to this film, it looks like they did it first, but can it be helped that I'd seen Legacy of Lies and Seized before it? On the other hand, the action is solid, Stu Bennett is a great counter to Adkins's hero, someone that really presents a legitimate, sizeable obstacle for him to overcome, which I think is important for how an action film plays out, as we get some real peril for our hero. That unfortunately brings us back to how much fun it would've been if Adkins had been able to play a Brit to see them both interact as Brits, but I digress, sometimes you just gotta take a good actioner when you can get.
We last saw Mr. Adkins when we did One Shot back in April, and in that review we mentioned that his output had slowed a bit. To give you a sense, when this film came out in 2016, he had 7 other films released, while in 2023 he has had John Wick 4, and then a film called Lights Out is listed as in post-production and expected to come out this year. I think that's okay, because it gives us a chance to catch up for him. We're now at 26 movies covered, but by my count, we have another 8-10 we could do of his, include Hard Target 2, the last of the Adkins Fest ones I need to do. 36 wouldn't be a bad number, but looking back to 2020 when he was doing 4-5 films a year at a minimum, we thought he was in the running to catch Dolph's record, and now it's probable he won't catch fellow Brit Gary Daniels even, let alone Dolph. What we get here though, and what we often get when he's front and center on the tin, is a solid performance, which is something I always appreciate--I just wish fewer directors would make him be an American! Follow Dolph's lead in Castle Falls, or Jesse V. Johnson in every film they've worked together on, they get that part right.
Another great Brit in this is Stu Bennett, and unlike Adkins he's allowed to play a Brit. The only other time we'd seen him on here was in Ross Boyask's I Am Vengeance films, where he was fantastic, and I think he does as great a job here as the baddie. According to IMDb, he's been doing more for the WWE--which is where he goes by the name Wade Barrett, the same as his name on the cover here--but he does have a project in pre-production called Code Name: Azrael with Ross Boyask, which also has Gary Daniels, Don "the Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Eric Roberts, Matthias Hues, and Dominique Vandenberg listed. How amazing does that sound? I know we're supposed to be talking about Eliminators, but I can't wait to see that movie! And as far as when we might see Bennett again, other than his WWE stuff and some TV appearances, he has one other film as far as I can tell, Fanged Up from 2017, so if that ends up on streaming we may make it happen.
As we mentioned above, this is now the third time we've seen the Adkins as a widower dad, which makes it feel like an American 60s TV show. I tried to find where it started, and I don't know if it was The Rifleman in '58, that seems like the earliest one, and then you had The Andy Griffith Show and My Three Sons that came out in 1960. Barbara Billingsley had to be worried every time her agent called--"Is this when they finally decide to kill me off and make Ward a widower too?" I was thinking it was the same as the adding a new kid device that 80s sitcoms used, only we also still had Full House that went the widower route as well, so it wasn't like the TV industry abandoned it entirely. Other shows employed it with adult kids, like Sanford and Son and Frasier, but it's not quite the same as a dad raising his kid or kids on his own. For whatever reason, in that tradition, people making movies with Scott Adkins have decided to use it as a plot device for him. If they're going to keep doing it, I hope at least one film has at least one scene where he's sitting in a den in a cardigan sweater smoking a pipe.
Finally, as we talk about streaming versus physical media, this film might be the best example of the struggle there. It's been yo-yoing between free streamers like Tubi and rental-only on places like Prime. As of this writing, it had just been clipped from Tubi after spending months on there. It's interesting, because some, like Abduction, which I haven't seen yet, seem to live on Tubi and never go away, while others, like this, you have to catch them when they're there. Physical media proponents would say this is why you need to buy it on DVD, because you'll always have it, and while I agree with that for the most part, my wife and I live in a small two-bedroom apartment, so we don't have the room for a massive collection, and I don't know that I need a DVD copy of this in a collection anyway. I know from J. Horton on one of his YouTube videos, often when a movie's been out for a while rental is the way to go, because one rental gets you more money than maybe 10 streams, and that makes sense. It's possible too that this was only on Tubi due to the bump they were expecting from Adkins being in John Wick 4, which might play into decisions on why something goes to Tubi for a short period or not. If that's the case, he's doesn't have a big budget production on the horizon, so other ones that I've been waiting to return like Incoming so I can get images for the blog may be shelved to rental for the foreseeable future.
And with that, let's wrap this up. While this is only available as a rental as of this writing, if you're going to see it I think it's best to wait for it to yo-yo back to free streaming. It's solid, but not enough to spend $3 on a rental when there are so many free things to watch out there.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4587366
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
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