HARD TARGET (1993)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle was the first American effort by celebrated director John Woo, who had gained international fame for his Hong Kong-made action movies, whose operatic qualities earned them their own subgeneric name, that of "heroic bloodshed." But TARGET lacks any of those outstanding qualities, like the rest of Woo's American output from 1993 to 2008, after which time he returned to Asian shores. My general sense is that the failing was one of cultural dislocation; Woo was just someone so invested in the dynamics of his birth-culture that he wasn't able to adapt to American culture, particularly not with such simple fare as a modernized take on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME chestnut. (Sidenote: such cultural adjustment is possible, as seen in the way former HK director Ronny Yu excelled with such genre products as BRIDE OF CHUCKY and FREDDY VS. JASON.)

Whereas the original short story concerned a human-hunting madman on a remote island, here we have a group of murderous thrill-seekers whose covert influence is spread throughout many nations. For a great deal of money, a mercenary named Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and his nasty lieutenant Van Cleef (Arnold Vosloo) will engage homeless people to voluntarily gamble with their lives, trying to elude one or more armed hunters, on the promise of a big payoff if the hunted men can escape death long enough. The newest victim of this perverse game is a homeless man named Binder (played by Chuck Pfarrer, the sole credited writer of TARGET, as well as a former Navy Seal). 

Unfortunately for Fouchon and Van Cleef, Binder had a daughter, one Natasha (Yancy Butler), who investigates her father's problematic death. By chance she meets a man named Chance (Van Damme) who has formidable fighting-skills, and Natasha gets him to act as her bodyguard as she begins her investigation. Since Chance is a Cajun guy who knows well the ins and outs of New Orleans, he's soon on the trail of the man-hunting killers. Despite a few run-ins with the police, the Big Easy soon becomes a battleground, with Chance's kung-fu kicks and Cajun craftiness taking on the heavy firepower of Fouchon and his henchmen.

The sole metaphenomal aspect of TARGET is the uncanny practice of hunting humans as an organized sport; everything else is a fairly standard action-opus, with barely any characterization for Chance, Natasha or any of their allies, though the actors perform their roles credibly. Henriksen and Vosloo make an admirable team in that both are such smooth operators that they believe themselves above the law, as long as they only prey on those on the margins of society. Of course the action set-pieces are the real stars, but though they were intense enough to make TARGET a box-office winner, I can't say any particular scene resonated with me. In fact, SURVIVING THE GAME, issued the year after TARGET premiered, struck me as a better exploration of  the sociological myths possible for a modern update of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.