"Hard Target" (1993)

 

There are action films and then there are John Woo films. Action films often feel like pale imitations of Woo's work and that's because the genre has since absorbed his flamboyantly excessive style. Woo's films invented much of the ridiculous internal logic action films thrive on -- single gun shots instantly causing explosions, people improbably avoiding flurries of bullets. But Woo never seems to do it because it looks cool but because he actually believes in his stylistic exercises and the heightened emotional drama (more familiar to Asian audiences than Americans). Hard Target is a pretty good example of this, despite some bland Hollywood genericness at work, especially in the first half of the film. Sure, the central story about a Most Dangerous Game-type scenario in which rich people hunt down homeless people for sport and the man who seeks to put an end to it (Jean-Claude Van Damme, still unable to give a believable line reading but, in Woo's hands, more plausible than he has any business being) is mental, but Woo gives it a style suitably as over-the-top as the premise. In its best moments, Hard Target is a dizzily balletic dance of practical effects. Don't deny yourself the simple pleasures of an action film done with no greater pretensions or intentions than to blow up its own excesses with yet more excesses.

Grade: ★★