How does one know when one has watched one too many low budget action flicks? When one sees the name G. Anthony Joseph in the opening credits and says to one self; ‘Oh damn, G. Anthony Joseph is this flick. Cool.’ This is when one realizes that he has stayed far too long on the dark side of movies and probably should start watching some old black and white French flicks for some filmic balance. Then one slaps himself across the head and realizes that he is not even close to being a real film critic and is just some dude who watches movies, can halfway stitch together a sentence, borrowed enough cash to buy a domain name and is once again comfortable with the notion that being familiar with the actors, directors and producers of low budget Straight to Video action flicks isn’t a bad thing at all and that he’d rather suck on a porcupine than watch an old black and white French movie. That diatribe now brings us to ‘The Eliminator’ starring Mixed Martial Arts superstar Bas Rutten in his first starring role.

Our film starts with a highly stylized title sequence which probably came close to blowing the entire budget for this thing with all of the 3D effects and fancy letters that are emerging from the foggy backgrounds on the screen. This is looking more like the case for as the credits end we are treated to rather lame powerboat race in which Dakota Varley (Rutten) is in competition with three other men for a prize of 250,000. Dakota wins the race then kicks some dudes ass and then walks up to races sponsor, one Miles Dawson (Michael Rooker – who we assume absorbed the remainder of the budget), to get his loot. What he got for his trouble was drugged, put in a cage on an airplane and thrown out of said airplane with a parachute strapped to his back over an uncharted island along with seven other dudes and dudettes.

The situation as it turns out is that Miles Dawson and seven of his closest evil rich buddies each grab themselves a champion, throw them on an island and then either have them kill each other or have them get hunted down until the one survivor is left to

claim the ten million dollar prize. The evil rich dudes all toss twenty five mil a piece to enter the game with winner getting the entire 200 million dollar pot. Controlling the game is The Warden (Mr. Joseph, who also served as a producer on this thing) who shoots one dude in the foot immediately for speaking out of turn, and then this dude gets his neck snapped by the crazed Negro Darius (Jamal Duff). This would really piss me off if I was the guy that just ponied up 25 extra large only to have the damn warden shoot my champion in the foot. Anyway, from various walks of life our heroes come, such as a muscle bound DEA agents (Paul Sloan) to wayward Freedom Fighters (Danielle Burgio) as they try to figure out a way off the island, avoid the hunters, avoid each other and especially avoid that crazy ass Negro.

I’m Black by the way so I’m free to call Darius a Crazy Ass Negro as often as I please. But ‘The Eliminator’ was really one silly, silly movie, but not one without entertainment value. Certainly Bas Rutten has what it takes to be a Straight-to-DVD action star as he speaks English way better than Jean Claude Van Damme, has some natural charm and charisma to him, doesn’t need a stunt man to do his fight scenes for him (cough. Cough Steven Seagal. Cough), he’s more than decent as an actor and he has this huge dome attached to his neck that makes him look invincible. There was plenty of action in the movie, though director Ken Barbet might not shoot the best action scene around, Michael Rooker is fine character actor and it’s got my main man G. Anthony Joseph in it doing his thing.

Of course being a Straight-to-DVD action flick it is required that not a lot of the movie make any type logical sense. In particular the idea of putting out ‘hunters’ at night to hunt these trained killers to systematically eliminate them, when a large number of them are actually trained in guerilla warfare. Now I ain’t the smartest dude in the world but all the Night Vision in the world isn’t going to help me against somebody who has made a life of hiding in trees killing people, occasionally adorn their face in war paint and happens to be a munitions expert on the side. When our ‘Survivors’ start killing these ‘Hunters’ and the Wardens shock that this actually happened was quite humorous. There was also the occasional bad green screen effect, pointed out to my by my twelve year old who apparently has a problem with bad green screening, and the biggest failing of ‘The Eliminator’ would be that the whole sole survivor movie theme has been done to death, and also done by movies far better than ‘The Eliminator’

I actually placed this movie in my cue because after watching another G. Anthony Joseph production in ‘Backlash’ I saw the trailer for this and decided that I had no right to ignore it, even though it came out a few years before ‘Backlash’. Surprising then that despite its tired storyline a suspect special effects that ‘The Eliminator’ was the better movie, and it still may be worth watching to see where Mr. MMA Bas Ruten got his start in embarking on what I hope will be a glorious DVD movie career for the man.