Cast:
Jean-Claude Van Damme (Chance Boudreaux), Lance Henriksen (Emil Fouchon), Arnold Vosloo (Pik Van Cleef), Yancy Butler (Natasha Binder), Kasi Lemmons (Detective May Mitchell), Chuck Pfarrer (Douglas Binder), Willie C. Carpenter (Elijah Roper), Wilford Brimley (Uncle Clarence Douvee), Sven-Ole Thorsen (Stephan), Jules Sylvester (Peterson), Robert Apisa (Lopacki), Tom Lupo (Jerome), David Efron (Billy Bob), Joe Warfield (Ismael Zenan), Eliott Keener (Randal Poe), Douglas Forsythe Rye (Frick), Mike Leinert (Frack), and Marco St. John (Dr. Morton) Directed by John Woo (#030 - Face/Off, #336 - Broken Arrow (1996), and #1100 - Mission: Impossible 2)
Review:
"Mr. Jim Jacks, the writer, Chuck Pfarrer, and Jean-Claude Van Damme, they flew over to Hong Kong to meet me, and push me to do the job. They all loved my movies, liked my style, and they wanted an American action film with a new look. And I found the people from the studio were very sincere, very warm, and made me feel very relaxed about doing the film. So I took the job."
There will be time yet to cover the long career of John Woo in all the meaningful details. He was born in Guangzhou, China before purges in the country saw his family move to Hong Kong when he was five; at the age of 23, he started work in the film industry with his first short before directing features in 1974. A director for over four decades, he has directed features for both Asian and American cinema, with The Killer (1987) receiving considerable attention abroad. After the release of Hard Boiled (1992), Woo decided to move to the States despite not having a dream to work there before coming there. Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL, had developed a script at Universal Pictures that was soon developed with Van Damme in mind. The script took a couple of renditions (such as being inspired by The Naked Prey (1965) and Aliens (1986)) before it found its final form, which was inspired by The Most Dangerous Game (as helped by producer Jim Jacks). Jacks, Pfarrer, and Van Damme all flew over to Hong Kong to meet Woo and try to get him to do it. Jacks helped to bring Woo onto the project, although the studio would have to be convinced to hire Woo because of their doubts - one about his handling of drama and the other about his command of English. Van Damme was the star brought on to star in the movie, although Pfarrer actually had Armand Assante in mind when writing the movie (for his part, Woo actually wanted Kurt Russell, but he was too booked). Woo had gone through a couple of scripts offered to him (one was a script involving switching faces...) before he accepted this one; Sam Raimi was hired by Universal as a potential successor to look over Woo in case things would go south for him, which is why he is credited as an executive producer, although obviously Raimi had confidence in Woo. Van Damme had the star power of script approval and even final cut privileges, which means that there are different versions of the film - Woo had to cut the film just to make sure it wasn't rated NC-17 (the last cut submitted to the MPAA that failed was called the international version, running at 99 minutes), while Van Damme insisted on a version with more of him, complete with close-ups too. This means that the theatrical cut is 97 minutes as opposed to a screening cut done by Woo, which had lasted 116 minutes; an unrated director's cut was released in 2021. A direct-to-video sequel was released in 2016 with none of the cast, and I'm sure none of you give a crap about that. Hard Target was the first Hollywood studio film made by an Asian director.
Even if he had trouble converting his directing talents to a Hollywood "sensibility", one can still see the talent involved in his distinct techniques, whether that involves slow-motion shots and birds that fly around before action starts. I'll be honest, the movie may be a "starring vehicle", but it actually is the second actor that takes control of general interest. No seriously, Henriksen is the more interesting presence in the movie, and this is in a movie where our lead is playing a Cajun drifter who just happens to be a former Marine with a greasy mullet, and one of the supporting actors is Wilfred Brimley playing a Cajun relative who doesn't even show up until a hour has passed. In a sense, it probably is a bit strange to see a movie about taking rich eccentrics and company hunting down homeless veterans (which happen to be in New Orleans after several hunts in other places). If Van Damme (a martial artist after his father enrolled him in classes at the age of 10 before also taking up ballet) is known for his rigid stature of doing one particular hero type for his movies, Woo at the very least managed to make him seem a bit more heightened in a way that will at least make one believe him to be in between say, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Steven Seagal (in other words, below the former but considerably higher than the latter). He moves well to the beat of the action without becoming just a man wrapped in the background of lurid fun, which makes it better than previous stuff like Bloodsport (1988), obviously.
There is a twisted elegance to Henriksen that dominates the interest in ways that probably made Van Damme jealous. Imagine someone as professional and dedicated to their work as Henriksen, who excelled in character roles such as Aliens, stealing the show away from a guy who kicks hard because of his pitch-black attitude. He lives on the edge, complete with a dandy weapon that makes him very entertaining to see against the lead, which is probably best represented by a scene where an explosion leads to his jacket being on fire and he just rips that thing off like it was a wad of gum on the shoe (which was an ad-lib by Henriksen). Vosloo is the other key adversary, and he does just as well here in conniving charm needed for the other sociopath in the movie. Hell, you could almost have made a movie with just them as the leads, in an offbeat sort of way, because one does have some fun with what they do together. Butler (making her feature starring debut) is the middle person between interesting presences that is adequate without becoming just a shell for nothingness (Lemmons gets to be the empty one, since authority figures in this kind of movie is like throwing beer on a fire). Brimley is clearly enjoying putting on an accent bordering on "hooting and hollering" that is silly enough to endear oneself to a movie that uses him to solid effect for the climax with Van Damme.
You will get the whole gumbo of things to note and possibly enjoy, whether that involves our lead biting a snake after asking someone to trust them before setting it up as a death trap, jumping over burning barrels before kicking a fuel canister to shoot at it, guys getting shot through keyholes, arrows being fired at home-made moonshine to help light people on fire, and a climax that happens in a Mardi Gras warehouse (it "helps" that the cops happen to be on strike) because the villain doesn't want to just take him down from the air. It really does flow like lurid ballet, packed with a tiny bit of philosophy (or something when the bad guy targets veterans that no one will notice for his weird hunts) mixed with the primal action. By the time the movie ends, you will either find yourself wanting to see the differences between this movie and other Van Damme movies or you will want to see further John Woo movies (he would do five further films in Hollywood before shifting his focus to make films in China by the end of the 2000s). Silly, bombastic, engaging, it really does make for a curious winner that will hit a certain kind of sweet spot in audience and never let go in Woo's attempt to make a modern Western that succeeds.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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