Hard Target
Even back when I was obsessed with John Woo as a director, I knew that his American debut, “Hard Target,” was lesser fair. Yeah, I found it entertaining, but I never would have put it up with “Hard-Boiled” or “The Killer” or “Face/Off.” With the remove of time, it’s easier to see why it has always been lesser John Woo, and it’s easier to see that, if he had been given some freedom on the film, it could have been more, which is actually more than I can say for his “Mission: Impossible 2.”
Let’s get the premise out of the way. The film starts with a group of men, led by Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen), hunting a man through New Orleans at night. He has to get to the river to survive, and he almost does, but is taken down just short. The man is a homeless Vietnam vet named Douglas Binder (played by the film’s writer, Chuck Pfarrer), and after the credits we see his daughter, Natasha (Yancy Butler), drive into town, only to find out that he was, in fact, homeless, a sad shock to the system for her. It’s not long until she comes across Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a former Special Forces soldier who looks for work on ships now, and the two team up to try and figure out what happened to Douglas in his last days.
From that basic plot description, you can basically see the form of the film come into focus- this is The Most Dangerous Game, only with Van Damme as the prey. (Fun side note: Van Damme was originally set to play Predator in the original 1987 film, but was replaced because he was too short. Interesting how this has a similar structure to it, with him playing the good guy instead of the villain.) John Woo directing a modern take on The Most Dangerous Game feels like a great idea, and I think it would have been had he been coming off of “Face/Off” or “M:i 2” with some creative freedom instead of just in Hollywood, where he had difficulties communicating with cast and crew, friction with Van Damme, and a nervous studio that had Sam Raimi on hand to take over, if needed. The latter didn’t happen, but the tension with Van Damme resulted in the star and his producer editing the film to their liking rather than accepting the longer cut Woo had put together; how we never got to see that cut is kind of embarrassing, if you ask me, although I will admit, this version doesn’t embarrass either star or director; it’s just not as good as you would hope from the latter.
One thing I couldn’t help but think about was how unfortunate it was that Woo never collaborated again with composer Graeme Revell, who wrote the film’s score. It’s not a particularly memorable work from the “Crow” composer, but I feel like his distinctive, percussion-heavy style meshes well with Woo’s directorial style, in this film, and while I’m overjoyed by the collaborations we got between Woo and Hans Zimmer and John Powell, Revell would have been an equally-compelling collaborator for the director. One collaboration I am glad never came to fruition, however, was a reunion between Woo and Van Damme. One of the things that makes “Hard Target” so awkward to watch, from an action standpoint, is how Van Damme tries to utilize his personal style of action fighting within what should basically be a guns blazing action thriller. When I read that Kurt Russell was the first choice for Chance, I must say I lamented that it wasn’t able to happen, because Russell would have been a much better fit for this film directed by Woo than Van Damme is. It also would have given us a “Thing” reunion between Russell and Wilford Brimley as Chance’s uncle. Yeah, I don’t know what’s more unbelievable- that Brimley and Van Damme are supposed to be related, or that really bad Cajun accent Jean-Claude trots out here.
I can defend every film John Woo made in Hollywood to a certain extent, and that includes “Hard Target.” I like the location, the supporting performances by Henrikson (who is gnawing at the scenery) and Kasi Lemmons as a detective who tries to help them, and some of the action is not bad. That being said, this is not really a good movie, and it just doesn’t feel like a John Woo film, when all is said and done. At least with the easily-maligned “Mission: Impossible 2,” it feels like a Woo film, even if it’s one that trips well into parody by the end. John Woo is playing too much into American action cinema here, and he stumbles along the way.
