When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
Operación caceria, Blanco Humano, Hard Target 01 Hard Target
JCVD stars in John Woo's Hollywood directorial debut as a drifter hired by a hottie to investigate what happened to her daddy and in the process gets caught in the middle of a most dangerous game with a gang of psychotic fucks lead by Lance Henriksen and his right-hand man Arnold Vosloo. Manhunt. Dog tags. Yancy before the crack. JCVD's earring. JCVD's mullet. Payphone. Purse snatch. Switchblade. Going all Kickboxer on some motherfuckers. The picket line. Day labor. Union dues. Suitcase of memories. Sad news. Zartan. Scissors. Bishop without Ripley. Nut punch. Police harassment. Piano keys. Massage interruptus. X-rays. Sassy cop. Letter opener. Peep hole headshot. Money belt. Cemetery fun. Desperate plea. Roper's last stand. Body bag goodbye. Exploding windshield.…
I don't like action films, but I LOVED Hard Target. Every now and then the genre offers up a film so amazing that I begin to question why I don't like more action packed, ass kicking movies; but to answer my own question, it's because, unfortunately, they can't all be directed by John Woo or Paul Verhoeven.
Woo's signature use of slow motion and pigeons adds a whole new level of commitment to how over-the-top action films are, and fortunately for him, it works so damn well.
Being an immigrant to a country in which I was not raised, I found myself appreciating certain aspects of this film from a possibly projected sense of over-thinking, but when I'm taking into…
"Poor people get bored, too." or "You are a fucking buffalo."
Such a great showcase for Woo, even in its bastardized release form* an exercise in style and excess, with his slow-fast-slow cutting fully intact and a tonal register that has room for both devastating regret and snake-punching. There's also a tantalizing predatory shock-capital institutional-failure streak, with rich scumbags Most-Dangerous-Game-ing it up in an economically depressed New Orleans during a police strike. If Woo's American films were coming out today, they'd be heralded as the unreconstructed works of an old master.
*There are four versions I know of: the 96-minute theatrical release; the 100-minute "international" version (restoring basic cuts for violence); the 116-minute rough "director's cut" (Woo's preferred version, temped…
"It's like a drug isn't it? To bring a man down." - Emil Fouchon
- JCVD Ranked: boxd.it/1ufiY
In New Orleans, LA there is an evil group of people that hunt the homeless for paid sport... GROSS! But there is a drifter named Chance Boudreaux who has had just about enough of that and decides to take 'em all down. This is one of my favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme films for reasons unknown... I just think it's great. It's a sultry film with sultry music and decent direction. I think it's probably the best combination of JCVD's physicality and his ability to be silly and weird.
So famously, John Woo screwed over Jean-Claude Van Damme... not really... but kind of.…
Hong Kong director John Woo made his mark back in his native country with hits such as The Killer and Hard Boiled starring Chow Yun-Fat back in the late 1980s. It wasn't long until he arrived in Hollywood that he unleashed his brand of Western-based high -octane violence and heavy-handed gunplay to the masses. 1993's Hard Target was Woo's U.S debut and his first film that starred predominantly Western-based actors. The character of Chance was originally going to be played by Kurt Russell, famed for Escape From New York and Big Trouble In Little China, in the main lead role, but he was busy with other projects, and thus was unavailable. Woo then turned to Universal Pictures first choice in…
The begging is slow and only gives a a taste of the outlandish shit you’re about to witness but once it get into gear, oh boy it goes full throttle and motherfucking ENTERTAINS.
Yeah the acting is fucking awful? Yes, Van Dam literally can’t speak English. Does the narrative make sense? No, the “story” doesn’t make a lick of sense but did I have fun watching JC Van Dam roundhouse kick a man off a moving motorbike? Fuck yeah I did.
If anything this film feels like a test run for Woo’s other English spoken action film; Face Off. There are certain setpieces during the action that are very similar and some that are straight up remade(the back to back through a wall only to quickly turn around and fire at said wall).
This movie stupid, stupid fun
Far better than I'd have expected from what I recall of its reception upon release. No, it's not Hard Boiled, but honestly what else is? Kudos to the stunt team, there's some insane nonsense pulled off in this movie.
The way the characters refer to the leading ladies father as her “daddy” is infuriatingly irritating, but we don’t come to a John Woo movie for the dialogue, do we?
John Woo is a great action director, there’s no doubt there. It’s his drama that he struggles with, dealing in basic caricatures and ludicrous situations that are so over-wraught, they come across as cornball rather than dramatic. But his action scenes in “Hard Target” are amongst the best from his American period. Over-the-top? Yes. Visually exquisite? Certainly.
Lance Hendrickson is phenomenal as the bad guy. Seemingly aware of what to bring to his two-dimensional villain in Woo’s action-opera. He fills the screen with his trademark intensity. Van Damme is about the same as usual, deadpanning his way through the movie, with the action sequences being the only time he kicks into high gear.
This is a bit big budget for me to review – directed by John Woo before he became a Chinese government propagandist, hefty budget, people you've heard of in starring roles – but they made a “sequel” last year starring Scott Adkins, and we love Scott Adkins, so we decided to watch this again for fun.
The presence of the cajun subculture in the USA is a huge boon to Jean-Claude Van Damme, who's played one in multiple movies so he doesn't have to hide his accent. He's played characters like “Luc Devereaux” (the Universal Soldier series), “Frenchy”, “Philip Sauvage”, “Kyle LeBlanc” and here he's “Chance Boudreaux”, the former soldier and now semi-drifter who's brought into the orbit of Natasha…
Porn tailor-made just for me? A Sam Raimi produced John Woo film with Jean-Claude van Damme in a mullet, Wilford Brimley speaking with a French accent and Lance Henriksen screaming "There isn't a country in the world I haven't fired a bullet in!".
Oh, how I stole shots from this when I did my first action movie, Snöfall, on glorious VHS in 1996. All the way from the jerky slow motion and endless supply of bullets to stealing actual sound effects. Oh, and my "acting" as the bald villain is my attempt to do Lance Henriksen/John Travolta in Broken Arrow.
Also: I remember some good friends of mine who did a drinking game out of this where they had to…
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