Directed by: John Woo
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yancy Butler, Arnold Vosloo, Lance Henriksen, Kasi Lemmons, and Wilford Brimley
Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme) is a
New Orleans longshoreman who is down on his luck and struggling to find
work. Opportunity comes his way when Nat (Butler) hires him to help her
find her missing father. As it turns out, her father isn’t missing,
necessarily, he was a victim of a malevolent gang of “human hunters”.
Led by Fouchon (Henriksen), and with his second in command Pik Van Cleef
(Vosloo), they get their kicks (and get rich) letting weekend warriors
pay them to go on the ultimate hunting expedition: for man! But they
meet their match with the fearless Chance, a man they cannot kill. Along
for the ride is Chance’s uncle Douvee (Brimley). Will Chance get his
chance at glory? Or, to the human hunters, is he just another HARD
TARGET?
Hard Target is hands-down one of Van Damme’s best. It’s explosively entertaining and lives up to the promise of a Van Damme and John Woo team-up. It’s everything a combination of those two men could be and should be, and doesn’t let the audience down.
Hard Target is hands-down one of Van Damme’s best. It’s explosively entertaining and lives up to the promise of a Van Damme and John Woo team-up. It’s everything a combination of those two men could be and should be, and doesn’t let the audience down.
Once again, this is classic 90’s action fun from the golden time when Van Damme movies went to the theater. Back then, we remember joking with our friends that because there’s so much slow motion in this movie, if it was all played at regular speed, the film would be about 20 minutes. And it’s true, there is a lot of dramatic slo-mo, but it’s all for the best. And Van Damme and others get a lot of unnecessarily portentous entrances and exits, which just adds to the style of Hard Target, which is just a tad bit off-kilter. But that’s far from a bad thing. It separates itself from its many competitors that way.
Besides Van Damme and his absurd hair, the cast assembled for this is just killer: Lance Henriksen is great as the baddie who’s so bad, even his piano-playing is evil. Vosloo is also adept at being bad, and his quasi-Scottish (?) accent, well, accentuates his sinister glares. Yancy Butler gives a bug-eyed performance who always seems surprised at the proceedings. But top marks must go to the great Wilford Brimley. In a strange role for him, the barely-intelligible, bow-and-arrow toting, horseback riding uncle is truly lovable and you root for him, even though he doesn’t appear until late in the film. That’s a tribute to Brimley that the audience can grow to love him so quickly.
This movie puts a twist on the time-honored Most Dangerous Game (1932) idea. The formula’s been tried before, with varying degrees of success, in everything from Death Ring (1992) to Avenging Force (1986). But Hard Target has plenty of awesome moments, including the extended climax in (what else) an abandoned warehouse. Never one to be afraid of wasting bullets, Woo pulls out all the stops in an extended feast of overkill. It’s over-the-top fun everyone should see.
On a technical note, the British DVD is longer than the American cut, including more violence. So try to track that down if you can, for the complete picture.
Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty
