Rent Hard Target on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by:Chuck Pfarrer
Directed by: John Woo
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen, Yancy Butler, Wilford Brimley
Rated: NC-17
Watch the trailer
Plot
A woman hires a drifter as her guide through New Orleans in search of her missing father. In the process, they discover a deadly game of cat and mouse behind his disappearance.
Verdict
It's a simple beat 'em up action movie. While it has a more than a couple of neat tricks, there just isn't much to this. The story is almost nonexistent. The villain hunts humans as sport and Van Damme, playing a Cajun, must stop him. Van Damme kicks his way through the movie and his adversaries, but there are only so many slow motion kicks to the face I can watch. For a Van Damme movie, it's not bad nor is that a ringing endorsement. While it has a few moments, that doesn't make up for the rest of this.
Skip it.
Review
The international cut was rated NC-17 in the U.S. Woo recut the movie twenty times to get an R rating. The R rated version is two minutes shorter to remove graphic injuries.
This opens with a guy being pursued in the middle of the night by several people that surprisingly haven't killed him yet despite how many bullets they've expended. In just the opening scene I thought arrows might be a main character with how many close ups they received. There's the question of why Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and his posse are chasing this guy, Binder. It's clear Fouchon is a villain. Did Binder steal from him? Look at his girlfriend funny?
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| Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Chance Boudreaux |
The introduction to Jean Claude Van Damme's character Chance Boudreaux generates so many questions. Why did the make him Cajun? Will his mullet have a perennially wet look throughout the movie? That answer is yes. Why does he wear a duster with rolled up sleeves? The movie's only answer is that Chance is a merchant marine hard up for money. He's not so callous that he doesn't help a woman being attacked in broad daylight. He kicks the would be thieves in the face and Natasha (Yancy Butler) tries to hire him to help find her father. If you're wondering whether her dad was killed in the opening scene, he was.
While the cops think Natasha's father died in a fire, Chance breaks the case wide open by proving it was murder. The cops didn't realize dog tags come in pairs. Nor did they notice the hole in Binder's chest.
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| Jean-Claude Van Damme plays Chance Boudreaux |
Fouchon's criminal enterprise is hunting people for sport. That's wild, and it makes it very easy to draw lines, though he specifically picked homeless people without families. It's just that Binder lied. Otherwise Fouchon would have gotten away with it, but he messed with the wrong Cajun. Making Van Damme Canjun is quite the choice. Fouchon must eliminate Chance and Natasha to conceal his deeds. They hide in the bayou.
This is where Chance punches out a snake. Why not? Chance calls upon his Uncle Clarence (Wilford Brimley) to help him out. Clarence rigs his house to blow, completely destroying the place and doesn't manage to kill anyone with the blast. Why did he do that? Was it already wired just in case?
This is an over the top action movie with a low of slow motion shots that could use more Van Damme fighting. The premise of hunting people is wild. It's a great example of the action genre from the early '90s. I wish it had more grounding in reality, but then we wouldn't get Chance balancing on a motorcycle like a human missile, kicking a guy in the head to finish him off after shooting him several times, or firing a gun upside down old west style. I also like the moment when a character tries to diffuse a grenade by removing the fuse. I don't recall ever seeing that. It's a neat trick. This movie is something else, but the problem is getting to these moments requires sitting through so much other.
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