The Mandroid (Patrick Reynolds) returns to the
present from Ancient Rome and dutifully transfers his loot to mutilated mad
genius Abbott Reeves (Roy Dotrice). Defying Reeves’ command to wipe the cyborg’s
memory and have him dismantled (because, you know, a Mandroid would totally not
be helpful at all in a fight or anything), kindly Dr. Takada (Tad Horino) sacrifices his life aiding
the Mandroid’s flight to freedom. Making
his way to robotics expert Colonel Nora Hunter (Denise Crosby), the Mandroid enlists her help in going back to stop
Reeves. Along the way, they hire
degenerate guide and boat captain Harry Fontana (Andrew Prine, playing the Michael
Douglas/Peter Fonda role and
wishing to Hell there were a giant Grizzly around to kill him) and pick up super
ninja Kuji (martial artist and once-promising Action film newcomer, Conan Lee).
Peter Manoogian’s Eliminators
is a prime example of selling the sizzle, not the steak, as Elmer Wheeler would say. All you need to do is look at the film’s poster
for confirmation. You have all four of the
movie’s heroes practically bursting forth from the one sheet in dynamic action
poses. If all you saw of this movie was
the advertising materials, you would believe that it was a superhero-esque team
film. What you get, however, is
decidedly different (one of the reasons a lot of people enjoy trailers and
posters more than the pictures they promote).
This is simply the way of many a low budget effort. A trailer lasts a few seconds to a couple of
minutes, and a poster usually sells a film’s most exploitable elements in one
static image (or they used to; today, they’re little more than
nigh-indistinguishable, Photoshopped images of floating heads over a limited
choice of background images, that is unless some artist is commissioned to
create [or just feels like creating] an actually individualized image which you
would likely never see in a theater near you, regardless [unless you happen to
have a cool rep/arthouse theater in your neighborhood, and even then…]; end
rant). Naturally, the
expectation-to-delivery ratio of the films themselves tends to be a bit lopsided.
But films need to have connective
tissue between action set pieces, and this holds even truer for small budget
movies. Low budget films simply cannot
afford to have wall-to-wall action. There
needs to be some time spent getting to know the characters in some capacity in
order for us to care at all about what happens to them (they don’t need to be
likable; they do need to be compelling).
Further, if a film is nothing but action, chases, explosions, and the
like, it becomes tiresome (even if the viewer is a self-professed Action
Junkie). A classical narrative film’s
structure needs to be arranged in peaks and valleys. If it hits the ground doing a hundred miles an
hour and doesn’t let up for any sort of interaction outside of action, a viewer
becomes bored and starts thinking about other things to do (or wishing they
were doing other things). Pacing is key
to a low budget Action film, and it’s something that more often than not is
mishandled. The filmmakers almost get it
right here. The actors are talented and
interesting enough that they make the long stretches between action sequences bearable. However, they also seem to forget that there
needs to be interesting things for them to do in these spaces, so bearable is
as far as they go.
With this in mind, the characters
themselves are about as cliché as cliché gets.
They’re cyphers with no truly distinguishing characteristics at their
cores. So, Harry is a scruffy loner with
a heart of gold. Nora is a hardassed
woman doing a “man’s job,” while also being feminine (she has to prove her
worth by fixing the motor on Harry’s boat, but everyone stops to gawp at the
side boob she flashes when changing out of her wet tank top). Kuji is the centered living weapon who is out
for vengeance. The Mandroid (aka John
Doe) is the man without a past and out of time (literally and figuratively). By assembling these archetypes, the
filmmakers attempt to create an ersatz Fantastic Four (with Dr. Reeves acting
as their Doctor Doom), even though two of the members have no super powers to
speak of (which is odd to me, all things considered), and they don’t have the
rapport that superhero teams typically share.
The characters are forced together and then forced to stay together,
because the script says so. Harry is a
scheming sort of guy, out for a buck and himself, but he gets miffed awfully
easily when he’s told his services are no longer required (especially dumbfounding
since he hardly knows these people). Nora
comes along because she just so happens to have been the person who designed
the Mandroid’s robotics. Kuji literally shows
up in the third act and becomes a loyal (and trusted) team member in
seconds. I’m sure there are weaker
kinships in films, but this stuff is still paper thin.
As set up in the introductory
scenes, the Mandroid’s memory plays a key role in the story, and I think it’s
to the filmmakers’ credit that he is the main protagonist, since he’s the sort
of character normally relegated to a supporting role (The Partner, The
Henchman, The Villain, et cetera). The
idea of the past plays out in several aspects.
Reeves is obsessed with the past, and this preoccupation motivates the
time travel element of the story (something I’m surprised wasn’t played up
more). The Mandroid’s memory is
manipulated by Reeves, and everything from before he became the Mandroid is
lost to him (read: his identity and by extension his humanity). The flip side of this dehumanization is
Reeves, who has kept himself alive via grafts, transplants, and transfusions
(assumedly in response to some type of genetic or aggressive disease, since his
face is disfigured when we first see him).
He wants to make of himself a sort of Mandroid 2.0. Yet Reeves has the advantage of maintaining
his personality and memories (which help form personality), and since his
identity is evil from the start, his Mandroid-ization is the completion of a
circle. The (good) Mandroid knows that
he had a life and a family, and this loss (even if only in a cognitive sense)
is enough for him to despair of his condition.
This contrast emphasizes the struggle of the main character and should
give the character a healthy dose of pathos with which the audience can engage.
The big problem here is that, outside
of mentioning John’s past, it’s not investigated in any detail. Apart from a photograph, he has no tether to
his pre-Mandroid past, so we can feel for his loss, but we can never know its
true depths, because we never learn about his past relationships. Perhaps that was partially intentional on the
filmmakers’ part: by not giving us a glimpse into his past, we understand his
loss and emptiness that much more (that is, we may empathize through this
feeling of incompleteness).
Unfortunately, ignorance is not always bliss any more than knowledge is
always ecstasy. Consequently, like the
rest of Eliminators, this attempt
only works by about half. It’s a fun,
mildly entertaining half, but I couldn’t help thinking that the other half was
so close to getting it right I could almost touch it and turn the total experience
into one whole ball of joy. So near, and
yet, so far, I suppose.
MVT: The main idea is
intriguing, and it’s something there wasn’t a ton of in the mid-Eighties. Plus, it’s ambitious on its face, so points
for that.
Make or Break: The big
showdown works well enough, under the circumstances. Of course, it also resolves itself in a headscratchingly
unresolved way. You’ll know what I’m
talking about when you see it.
Score: 6.25/10