Hard Target

While the previous 2 movies of John Woo Month focused mostly on gun fights, today's films is also geared more towards martial arts. Woo's first American film, and the first major Hollywood film by a Chinese director: Hard Target.

Released in 1993, and starring John-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen, Yancy Butler and Arnold Vosloo, Hard Target follows a distraught daughter trying to unravel the mystery behind her fathers death in New Orleans. While not his most successful film at the box office or with critics, it has all the Woo trademarks, and as his first big film released outside of his native China, is deserves it's acknowledgement.

The movie opens with a man named Douglas Binder, a homeless veteran, on the run from a group of mercenaries led by Emil Fouchon (Henrikson) and his lieutenant Pik Van Cleaf (Vosloo). They run a criminal organisation in which, for a considerable sum of money, they find destitute individuals who them and their clients hunt for sport. To make their chases more interesting, they only hunt men with military experience.

After a challenging pursuit, Binder is killed, and forgotten about as soon as all of their other prey. But unbeknownst to them, Binder has a daughter named Natasha (Butler), who has traveled to New Orleans to find him. To aid her in her search, she hires the services of a homeless man with incredible martial arts skills, and suspiciously clean and neat hair and clothing despite being out on the streets.

The man in question, Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme), helps Natasha in her search, discovering that Binder was roped into the hunting game while handing out flyers for a seedy recruiter named Randal. Upon confronting Randal, Chance discovers the existence of the mercenaries, and in doing so, incurs their wrath, resulting in him becoming, unwittingly, their next target.

Of all the Woo films I've seen, it's definitely one of his weaker efforts. The plot is paper-thin and the writing is poor, even by his standards. Also it suffers from, big shock, some below-par acting by Van Damme. But let's face it, like his other movies, he's there to do what he does best, kick profound amounts of ass. This is where the movie naturally excels, it's action scenes. As well as all the usual shoot-outs and chases (including a rather spectacular one on motorcycles), we get a few great Kung Fu scenes, such as Natasha and Chance's first encounter. But by far the best part of the film is the climax, where Van Damme is outnumbered and cornered in an abandoned warehouse. This has some of Woo's best choreographed and most entertaining violence. One of his most gratuitous shoot-outs, and also one of his best.

So, yeah, its dumb, it's over-the-top, it makes little sense, but it's always a ton of fun to watch. Is it his best film? No. So what is? Well I can't really decide. But what I can decide on is his most unhinged and, for lack of a better term, Wooest. Tune in next week to find out which one it is.