In the early 90's two names were competing for the title of martial-arts-box-office-champ. Those names are Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme. I'm not sure who ever won but I'm pretty sure that Van Damme's career shows a more wider range of moviemaking while Seagal has more movies that are fun because they all feel they belong to a large franchise since he plays practically the same character in every movie. Van Damme started small, his first two roles being villains before he became the hero in following movies. These were mostly low-budget films but like Steven Seagal did with Under Siege he eventually reached a wider audience (with Universal Soldier) and became a true star. Like Seagal his movies also started flopping around '97 and he went into the same DTV-business as Seagal did. But Hard Target is from 1993 when he was still on top of his game and is legendary director John Woo's first picture he made in America.

The plot is fairly simple and straightforward. Rich men hunt on homeless people with an army background and no relatives. One victim does seem to have some family ties and has his daughter searching for him. Jean-Claude, a bum himself, helps her out to make some easy cash but before you know it they're in over their head and being hunted themselves. Luckily Jean-Claude, here named Chance Boudreaux, has his own background in the army (hmmm, this rol could've easily gone to Seagal) and will do anything to become the hunter himself instead of the prey.

Hard Target is simple but fun entertainment. It differs not much from Van Damme's early movies like Wrong Bet (or Lionheart or whatever that movie is called) or Death Warrant but under the direction of John Woo this movie reaches a whole new level for Van Damme and Woo's elegant direction supplement the moves Van Damme does on screen. Sure it's far from perfect and suspension of disbelief is required... heavily but it's beautifully choreographed and is one of Van Damme's best films to date. It's one he'll always be remembered for for as long as we will remember him. Hard Target's villains are Lance Henriksen and his tracker/compagnon Arnold Vosloo. Vosloo would go on to star in the two sequels of the Darkman franchise. Those and this movie are both produced by Sam Raimi so he must have made a good impression on him. Henriksen is his usual self with his dark menacing voice chewing scenerey whenever he can. As fate would have it he would star 15 years later in Pistol Whipped with... Steven Seagal. He also played in a Hellraiser movie but that has got nothing to do with anything.

Now there's some criticism and that's the end sequence. Van Damme and friends are hunted by 20 people and Van Damme of course takes them all out. But this whole end-sequence takes up to at least twenty minutes. That's 20 minutes of fighting and gunfire in a confined area. It felt a way too long and could've used some cutting there.

Hard Target is a movie that deserves a little more credit than it usually gets and a respectable release on DVD/Blu-Ray. So far all we've got is a bare bones non-anamorphic DVD-release. I would love to see an unrated (yes, tons of material seem to have been cut for an R-rating, damn you MPAA!) version in high defenition.

It's funny how I suggest cutting a sequence while in the next paragraph I'm complaining about how much was cut out. But that's just me.

Where's PETA when you need them?