Chasse à l'homme

This is basically raw John Woo: bullets flying, fire blazing, good guys, bad guys, this movie has the whole ball of wax! In Woo's 1st American flick, Jean Claude Van Damme high-kicks and shoots as many baddies as he can trying to find the killers of the father of Yancer Butler's character right in the heart of the deep South.



Van Damme is as physically fit as ever. He sports a Kurt Russel-style hairdo in this movie, but his voice is as incoherent as always! His Belgium accent was really "hard" to understand, and it got to my nerves throughout the whole film!!

But, he busts up the good guys with real finesse. Arnold Vosloo and Lance Henrikson also light up the screen with their sleazy yet very believeable villain performances. The fight and shootout scenes in this film are amazing. Watching "Hard Target" was really a great experience, and it was worth the $2.10 rental! Watch the gunfight behind the wall between Van Damme and Vosloo. It might remind you of a good "Face/Off"!!

I don't know John Woo's early asian works, but this is the best film he made in the US. It is not as excessive as his later films like M:I-2.

I have to say that I don't really like Jean Claude Van Damme nevertheless his performance is pretty good in this one. But it's Lance Henriksen who still dominates this movie. Every second of his appearance makes me wonder why he isn't up there in the "Kevin Spacey-League". His acting is outstanding.

The plot is acceptable but this ain't Shakespeare. It's still a Van Damme flick even though a very good one.

As with many action movies, Hard Target's strengths and weaknesses are fairly simple to analyse. It's a competent action thriller, notable for some stylish action scenes that have John Woo's touch; one particularly memorable example is when Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) quite literally blasts a bikie thug out a window with a shotgun and a petrol can! These moments pretty much make the film worth seeing by themselves, despite the usual weaknesses in the plotting and JCVD's ever wooden countenance. As JCVD himself noted however, viewers paid the money to see him waste bad guys and he does plenty of this - sometimes in more inventive ways than expected (using snake traps). It very much makes the film worth seeing for action buffs, even though I'm reluctant to give a really high rating based on this alone.

The plot is not too extraordinary: a homeless veteran gets murdered by a team of mercenaries led by Emil Fouchoud (Henriksen) and Van Cleaf (Vosloo), after which his daughter Nat (Butler) comes looking for him and commissions Boudreaux, a homeless Cajun merchant marine (!) to help her out after he rescues her from marauding thugs, raising the ire of the mercenary team. A few plot holes are obvious (shouldn't this mercenary team have been dealt with a while ago, police strike or not? Why is JCVD made a CAJUN?), but it works well as a vehicle for blowing stuff up and killing people.

The dialogue is pretty standard stuff: some profanity, some hilariously cringeworthy lines ("don't worry about Randall; he's all ears!) and some macho stuff.

As for the acting, the villains are better than the heroes. Of course, when JCVD is your hero, that's bound to be the case, with his unconvincing delivery. He has recently shown that he is capable of acting, but he was a long off that in 1993. Still, English is probably his third language (after French and Dutch); Yancy Butler has no such excuses, being quite wooden in a role that doesn't demand that much. Vosloo and Henriksen are much better though. Vosloo has that quiet menace that always makes him a good villain, while Henriksen goes from menacing and purposeful to merrily nuts as Boudreaux causes him more difficulties than expected. Even Wilford Brimley is amusing as Chance's crazy uncle, reeling off some zany lines.

In the end, Hard Target is not a great movie, but it's a competent action thriller with some nice stylistic touches from John Woo during the action scenes. Henriksen, Vosloo and Brimley compensate somewhat for JCVD and Butler, but you still shouldn't watch this film for the acting and especially not for the plotting. Action fans generally don't really look for either that much though, so that's alright. Movie- goers looking for a bit more will probably like some of the style, but won't find that much else.

3/5 stars

Action master John Woo's first (and best) American movie is somewhat of a disappointment to his Hong Kong movie fans--see "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer" for comparison--but still miles better than most Hollywood action fare. A good introduction to Woo's directing style with plenty of show-stopping action sequences, incredible stunt work and a solid performance by Van Damme. Despite a very impressive ending set piece and lots of awesome slow motion gun play, the movie (as released) seems to be missing something. Seek out the unrated, uncut version if at all possible--you won't regret it!

Many people see "Jean-Claude Van Damme" in the lead and think this another stupid, no-brainer action flick and guess what? It is! BUT, it is also a very entertaining film, kind of ripoff of the old "Most Dangerous Game" storyline....and, if you can suspend belief for 90-100 minutes, you'll be vastly entertained....and that's the name of the game, folks.

Some of the action scenes are outrageous and big-time "Rambo" mentality, meaning an entire arsenal that could wipe out a small country is used against our hero and never seems to kill him! People are being shot in the streets but no is ever around in the middle of the day but the killers and victims? Usually that stuff annoys me, but I didn't seem to mind in this movie. In fact, it fits.

Despite the lack of credibility, Van Dame standing on top of a speeding motorcycle as it heads towards an onrushing car, and later dodging all kinds of pretty neat weapons as he tries to help Yancy Butler, is just fun. John Wood-directed films tend to be ridiculously exaggerated and loud, so that's what you get. I am not a fan of many of his films, but I am of this one. It's pure macho madness with a Lance Henriksen doing what he does best: be an incredibly-nasty and brutal villain. An added bonus in here - a real hoot - is old man Wilfred Brimley as Van Damme's French uncle who comes to his nephew's aid.

Add a great blues soundtrack and you have a great film to feed your male hormones with when needing to be fed some gratuitous violence.