Woo is best known for ultra-violent over-the-top shootouts that are climactic no matter how many times they occur. On one occasion, the combination of bluesy acoustic guitar, slo-mo cinematography and a jeans-clad Van Damme turns 'Hard Target' into a Levi's 501 Jeans commercial. Woo is famous for the stylization in his films, but here it's almost as if he watched too much MTV between takes. In fact, he seems to treat Woo's film as a fashion shoot, forever posturing and pouting like Fabio between kicks and punches. Of course, Van Damme is an easy target and he doesn't camouflage his shortcomings very well. His first words, to a waitress after breakfast, are 'za coffe was tolable' (terrible or tolerable: vous make the call). Coming to her aid, tres reluctantly: Monsieur Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux, a merchant seaman down on his luck and unconcerned with pronunciation (the Belgian accent is explained away zees time by the proximity of Cajun country). Things go well until Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler of television's 'Mann and Machine' and 'South Beach') turns up looking to reconnect with her estranged father, who has, unfortunately, just become the hunting party's latest trophy. They offer vets $10,000 if they can elude their hunters and reach the river. there's always some unhappy little corner of the planet where we can ply our trade,' Fouchon tells his sadistic South African helpmate Pik Van Cleaf (Arnold Vosloo).

But New Orleans is really just a pit stop. The original premise: A crazed hunter lures guests to a remote island and makes a game of hunting a potentially dangerous adversary - man! The latest variation has a group of rich contract hunters, led by the sadistic Emil Fouchon (all-purpose villain Lance Henriksen), preying on solitary homeless veterans in the urban jungle of New Orleans.īecause of a police strike, the hunters operate with impunity. Van Damme's last film, 'Nowhere to Run,' was a dumbed-down update of the classic western 'Shane.' This time, the original source material is 'The Most Dangerous Game,' a Richard Connell story first adapted to the big screen in 1932 under that name, recycled as 'A Game of Death' in 1945 and as 'Run for the Sun' in 1956, and exploited under various titles by dozens of television series over the years. Woo, a master of stylized violence and explosive action, has had to buy into America's fascination with explosive effects and reaction. Here, he's forced to hire Jean-Claude Van Damme and it's pretty much downhill from there. At home Woo writes his scripts, controls his editing, imposes his imagination. The only thing wrong with John Woo's American debut, 'Hard Target,' is that it's too American and not enough Woo.ĭespite a string of critically acclaimed foreign action films, including 'The Killer' and 'Hard Boiled,' the Hong Kong-based director has run into a Hollywood system that wants to like him but refuses to trust him.

Hard target yancy butler