Hard Target (1993, John Woo) (Patreon)

60/100

Hated the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie directed by John Woo, adored the John Woo movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. For about 45 minutes, it looks very much as if it's gonna be the former; Van Damme, I maintain, was little more than a mullet and a roundhouse back then, lacking either Schwarzenegger's sense of humor or Stallone's grim masochism, and pairing his charisma-free smolder with Yancy Butler's Resting Startled Face arguably qualifies as a human rights violation. I started feeling disconsolate during the first fight sequence, which employs slo-mo in a way and to a degree that undermines the only thing JVCD's any good at. (Gotta say Woo never does quite figure out how to incorporate Van Damme's ostensible skill set, even after the movie takes a turn for the awesome. At one point, Chance, a gun in both hands, fires five bullets into a baddie's chest at point-blank range, pauses to deliver a single kick in the face, and then shoots him in the chest eight more times. Not convinced the kick adds a lot to that particular sequence.) With the exception of a dove cameo and one nice push into a pair of scissors that Van Cleef jams into the doorframe (after having used them to cut off someone's earlobe), there wasn't much in Hard Target's first half to remind me that one of the world's finest action directors was at the helm. Had to credit screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer with the strongest moment to that point: Fouchon's latest victim making it to a populated area, only to discover that nobody will pay the slightest attention to an African-American man who looks homeless, no matter how desperate his pleas for help.

Then, rather abruptly, the film's needlessly elaborate "Most Dangerous Game" riff gets simplified to a bayou version of First Blood (admittedly not unrelated), with the villains hunting Chance, who hunts them back in turn. This allows Woo to dispense with plot mechanics, trim Pfarrer's crappy dialogue to a minimum, and park Butler with Wilford Brimley, whose laughably bad Cajun accent serves as a distraction from her perpetual impression of a deer in the headlights. The extended shootout and motorcycle chase that immediately follow Lobeless Dude's execution wouldn't look out of place in Hard-Boiled, with Woo firing on all kinetic cylinders, and every setpiece thereafter—let's not count the very silly snake-punching bit—is vintage enough that I kept involuntarily casting my eyes down for subtitles. (Could've used 'em for Brimley. Jesus.) Shifts in angle and speed are thrillingly dynamic, as in the classic Hong Kong pictures. Van Damme finally looks cool even when the shot isn't just an ECU of his periorbital region. It helps enormously that he's no longer required to act, functioning entirely as a sculpted object made heroic by camera and choreography; late-breaking jabber goes largely to Henriksen and Vosloo, both of whom give good sneer and are solidly despicable. (Hadn't realized that the latter's fame predates The Mummy.) Some serious stupidity remains: This is still the kind of movie in which one of the evil predators, suddenly face-to-face with a woman he's been actively trying to kill, pauses to snarl "You...fucking...bitch" instead of just shooting her, and there's no sensible reason for Fouchon not to just throw the grenade away (preferably, from his standpoint, toward Chance & Co.) rather than sit there fumbling with its fuse. Nor can I overlook the expository half's numerous soporific aspects. But I'd long assumed that Woo more or less started from scratch upon arriving in America, taking several films to recover his mojo. Now I know better.