DVD Review – Elimination Game (2014)

In the future where reality TV has reached its summit Turkey Shoot, where people are hunting and killing one another to entertain the world! Live… Death. The latest contestant is disgraced veteran, Rick Tyler (Dominic Purcell) a man sentenced to death for horrific war crimes. In the first ‘level’ he’s dropped in the Appalachian Mountains against three top killers from across the globe and a decorated US marine sniper; Ramrod (Robert Taylor)!

Tyler surprises everyone by breezing through the competition in the first level and he even leaves Ramrod embarrassed in front of the nation. Turns out there’s history between Ramrod and Tyler, it seems Tylers backstory might not be what the tabloids are telling us.

X: Night of Vengeance writer/director Jon Hewitt delivers us ELIMINATION GAME aka TURKEY SHOOT. Turkey Shoot is a remake of THE original Turkey Shoot from 1982. Nowadays films like this titled Elimination Game is easily packaged and shot out into the world as a clone along the lines of Running Man, Battle Royale – hell you can even try and compare it to The Condemned!

It’s not a game changer when compared to those above titles, Purcell is stone faced and doesn’t really seem that concerned whether he’s good or bad. Can he be an innocent man when he’s ploughing through sets of deadly killers and martial arts experts without a moment’s hesitation?

Our leading lady is played by Spartacus: War of the Damned actress Viva Bianca, she too doesn’t bring much to the table and honestly she doesn’t lessen the viewing experience. She’s just there – which sounds horrible, but at least with her roles in shows like Spartacus she had an interesting character, they did interesting things – you felt something for those characters. But in the Elimination Game she just never captured my attention as much as I hoped.

The action and the editing isn’t up to scratch, when Tyler is first put to work in the first level the editing is fast and the ‘contact’ shots are showing repeatedly from several angles, none of them flattering. Then towards the end when they’ve reached the ‘final’ level it’s essentially turned into violent security cam footage montage of someone in a hoodie ducking bullet shots and disabling several attackers, it doesn’t even look like Purcell fighting at this point.

For only being 90 minutes long Elimination Game does slump, they do throw a lot of action and explosions, but it’s not exciting enough.

Altitude Film Entertainment are handling the DVD release of Elimination Game and there’s no special features other than the trailer for film. It’s a write off I’m sorry, but hey if you’re bored and it’s on Netflix go-ahead, well check to see if they still have Battle Royale first. Priorities.

1.5/5