Hard Target

1993 Directed by John Woo

Don't hunt what you can't kill.

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.

Jean-Claude Van Damme Arnold Vosloo Lance Henriksen Yancy Butler Sven-Ole Thorsen Wilford Brimley Ted Raimi Kasi Lemmons Willie C. Carpenter Eliott Keener Chuck Pfarrer Robert Apisa Douglas Forsythe Rye Mike Leinert Lenore Banks Barbara Tasker Randy Cheramie Robert Pavlovich Marco St. John Joe Warfield Jeanette Kontomitras Tom Lupo Jules Sylvester David Efron Codie Scott

Alternative Titles

Operación caceria, 終極標靶

adventure drama crime action thriller

97 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 4

"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…
Review by Branson Reese 4

Basically two types of people, as I see it.
Type one: Thinks the funniest part of this movie is JCVD humanely punching a rattlesnake in the head to knock it out. These people are usually harmless. They go about their lives and are missed when they pass but on the rare occasion when they look to the stars all they see are some spots of light in the night sky.
Type two: thinks the funniest part is Wilford Brimley as a Cajun moonshiner cheering in slow motion as he rides a horse. These people are artists, dreamers. The round pegs in the square holes. These people have the capacity for profound good but also for unthinkable evil. You can hate…
Review by Hollie Horror ★★★★★ 16

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…
Review by Todd Gaines ★★★½ 32

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.…
Review by Joe ★★★★½ 2

You, a fool: Van Damme punches a snake.
Me, wise: Van Damme winks at a bird.
Review by Nakul ★★★½ 1

When Jean-Claude Van Damme punches that snake, Classic.
The first big American studio film directed by an Asian, John Woo's Hollywood directorial debut is lite-Woo with ton of flaws but it still goes hard, especially in the third act. It's definitely Van Damme's best film. The action sequences are so well-staged, it's poetic. Bob Murawski steals the show.
Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★★ 15

Can you believe I had this at a mere 3 stars before? Further prove that you can't take anything I say serious! This has so much slow-motion, the best mullet in the history of cinema and some super Sick action.
Also some of the best lines are said here..
YB: What kind of name is Chance?
JCvD: My mamma took one.
Point her titties north
Don't make me look bad in front of my dogs
A great and super cheesy John Woo/JCvD flick.. I love it!
Watched with Michelle, which is always the best!
Review by Waiching Liu ★★★★★ 1

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…
Review by Slig001 ★★★½

John Woo and Jean-Claude Van Damme team up for Hard Target, which of course means lots of slow motion kicking. The plot is a play on the central idea of The Most Dangerous Game and focuses on a bunch of rich people who hunt homeless veterans for fun. The film starts with a bang - an extremely over the top hunting action scene, and it basically keeps this up for the entire runtime. It's all very over dramatic, but this actually works in its favour a lot of the time. Some of the action sequences - one involving Van Damme straddling a motorbike at about the midway point - are so ridiculously overblown that it's impossible not to smile. The…
Review by laird ★★★★ 2

"Yeah." - JCVD to a miraculous dove that flew in through his window and landed on his dog tags reminding him of his virtuous past and giving him the clue he needed to solve a mystery.
Woo/Van Damme ain't nothin' to fuck with.
So many villains cleansed by fire, so many men shot repeatedly in the chest before being roundhouse kicked as a coup de grace.
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★ 9

90’s Hollywood finest musical. Just a marvel of intelligent staging. Also no film from JCVD heyday quite figure out so well what to do with his not quite belonging presence.
Review by Mads Ej ★★★½

This was a fun action movie with a good story and cool action scenes.
I liked how the movie started out focusing on the treatment of homeless people, before revealing that a group of rich people are hunting them for fun. Our main characters find out about this group of rich people, while searching for the girl’s lost father and now they have to fight.
The acting really had it’s ups and downs but the cheesiness and coolness from both the hero and the villain saved their performances.
The movie had many great action scenes and a lot of violence, which was cool and entertaining but i didn’t like the movie’s style that much. The editing was kinda bad at times and the movie was filled with unnecessary slow motion scenes, which could get annoying.
It was simply just some good dumb fun.

Recent reviews

Review by Jerry Eldred ★★★½

oh my god
Review by Robin Burdge ★★★★

Wilford Brimley as Old Man Gambit. Make it happen, Marvel!
Also this is some Prime Henriksen!!
Review by salah_bloushi ★★★★

Van Damme karate punching a snake is cinema at its finest.
Review by Andrew M ★★★★

if the front half of this movie were a haircut, it would be trim, slick but no fuss. you could say all business. for the back half though, fast and loose, ready to party, almost a different kind of haircut altogether. you’d think that style wouldn’t age well, but in many ways a true classic of its kind. Makes you miss the days before poisoned irony, where someone could commit to something so loud and proud
Review by Austin Skywalker ★★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This has everything you could want in an action film IMO. JCVD shoots every bad guy 20 times and then roundhouse kicks then in the face all in the beautiful style of John Woo. Wilford Brimley shows up in the 3rd act and injects his charisma and humor while being a complete badass. Lance Henriksen and Arnold Vosloo are great at being the bads and never waste a second of their screen time convincing you otherwise. The casting in this movie was really perfect. Always enjoy a Ted Raimi cameo too.
Review by isaac_ve_filmes ★★★

Back to back banter. Guns. Doves. Slow Motion. John Woo. Good
Ação. Músculos. Porrada. Tiros. Explosões. Violência. Morte. Pombas a voar em câmara lenta. Ninguém consegue juntar melhor estes elementos que o John Woo. Sou um grande fã. Apesar de fazer filmes completamente vulgares, iguaizinhos a todos os outros, Woo consegue ser diferente e melhor. Porquê? Não sei explicar. Deve ser uma coisa asiática. Ou pode ter que ver com as pombas brancas... Não sei.
Até o Jean-Claude Van Damme está bem aqui, mesmo com aquele corte de cabelo estranho... E ainda por cima há o bónus de se poder ver o Lance Henriksen, um dos grandes actores menosprezados do cinema americano. Bom filme de ação e porrada. Não tarda nada é um clássico.
Review by werewolf_nun ★★★★

I cheered when Wilford Brimley's name appeared in the opening credits. A+ explosions
Review by Vinicius Guimarães ★★★★ 2

"This man who chase after you, he mad at you for business or pleasure?"
"Both"
Van Damme and John Woo combo is as good as it sounds, if not even better, making Hard Target works as a wild and silly action masterclass, filled with impressive set-pieces that takes a simple revenge story and goes so damn hard with it, and the final result is a violent ballet about america in the eyes of a immigrant, and this works both for the protagonist or the director of the film
Woo showcases american iconography and brings some touches into economical question, however the text is pure cheesiness, and his attention goes full in visual set-pieces with a exaggerated level of slow-motion and explosions, going from motorcycles to horses, while fire consumes everything around ourselves and it all looks cool as hell, what a picture
Review by Brad Nelson ★★★★★

jean-claude van damme shoots a guy like five times with an upside down gun, roundhouse kicks the cigar out of his mouth, and then, kneeling next to the prone and smoking body of this bullet-riddled and face-dented dude, apologizes for ruining the guy’s shirt, which looks like a pollock print and a rauschenberg print fed on each other. five stars
Review by Ben Morley

“It appears your trophy is ripping us a new orifice”
Even in its truncated form; John Woo’s Hollywood debut is both an outrageously entertaining genre oddity and a cutting satire of figurative blood sport and concepts of ethics vs professionalism in modern America.
Review by Cody Beckman ★★★½

This was a fun, over the top John Woo action flick that does a good job at continuously escalating the action. The story is actually pretty intriguing as well with good villains to match. The slow mo started to drive me nuts though because it felt like it was hampering the momentum and pacing of the action a lot of times. JCVD was cool as hell though. So much so that he even made the mullet work.
Review by Andy Brock ★★★★★

Forget the soup; the real tragedy is the studio/MPAA meddling that reduced Woo’s 115 minute masterpiece into a 95 minute near-masterpiece.