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Blackmail, Murder & Mayhem

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Hard Target

Hard Target

List Price: $9.98
Your Price: $9.98
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of John Woo's best!
Review: This movie will keep u interested and it won't let u down, believe me. I don't care if you don't like Van Damme movies, this is the one to see. It's about a hunter that likes hunting homeless men for fun until Van Damme steps to the plate. Woo creates his slow-motion sequences again and this movie remains one of the best action movies i've ever seen. Go see it!1

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Keep You On The Edge of Your Seat!
Review: I certainly enjoyed this movie. A group of villains makes a sport out of hunting homeless Viet Nam veterans. When Van Damme is hired to get to the bottom of this situation the action picks up. The human hunters have picked a target that certainly defends himself. The villains certainly add to the story line. They are totally ruthless. Van Damme shows his ability to survive and hang in when times are tough. An exciting action film. You will not leave your seat watching this one.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: God Damn Van Damme!
Review: Let me just say here and now that I hate Jean Claude Van Damme. Loathe, detest, despise; all these words spring to mind when I think of him.

It is therefore a tribute to the talents of his co-stars and director that I quite enjoyed this movie. If this film had cast someone else as it's lead I would probably have loved it.

Let's start with the direction shall we? I'm sure you're only looking this up as you're a Woo fan (if you're a Van Damme fan you're probably already planning on saying this review wasn't helpful, but I have to type what I think, OK?).

I'll be brutally honest, and say this is probably one of Woo's worst films. It is nowhere near as good or original as his Hong Kong work. However, rather poor John Woo than, for instance, peak Chris Columbus? It had all his trademark flourishes, and I was only bored when van Damme had to try to act emotional, which I have to say isn't Woo's strong point at the best of times. Other than that it was fun, however.

Plot? Hmm, well, basically the bad guys charge people large sums to hunt homeless ex-Nam veterans for the thrill. Yasmine Bleeth's father is killed and she hires Van Damme to help her track down who did it. Believe me, it's less exciting than it sounds.

Van Damme compete's for worst acting award with his co-star Yasmine Bleeth, and he only wins by a narrow margin. Her character should be feisty and sympathetic; as it was I wouldn't have cared less if she got taken out in the first 20 minutes. Wilfred Brimly also gives an embarressing impersonation (note the word is impersonation, not performance) as a French backwoods man

OK, bitching over, on to the good points. There are two, and their names are Arnold Vosloo and Lance Henrikson. They are clearly having so much fun being bad I just wanted to get up on the screen and join them. By the end of this film I guarentee you'll be wishing they'd won!

Henrikson is just icy as the head honcho in charge of the hunts. He gets some great lines and is quite menacing. His last line as he drops a grenade cracked me up.

Vosloo (The Mummy himself) just oozes cool. He is clearly loving this role, and even if he wasn't superb I'd still love him for kicking Van Dammes arse into the middle of next week. However he doesn't get angry. He's a professional...

So, is this a film you should watch? I'd say yes if you are one of the following;

1) A Van Damme fan. It's probably his best film apart from Time Cop.

2) A Woo fan (like me); not his best work but still with classic Woo trademarks.

3) A Vosloo/Henrikson/ badguys in general fan (like me again!); they really help make this film work.

4) A fan of cheesy action flicks; I fall into this group as well I'm afraid.

If you want an intelligent action thriller with urbane and witty dialogue throughout, avoid this film like the plague. If you've a taste for fun cheese, like Woo in the driving seat and can't get enough of cool but humourous bad guys, then this is definitely a film you should take a look at.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You Must find the Uncut version!
Review: The R-rated version of Hard Target is what happens when censorship gets out of hand. The Uncut verison is so much better, if you can find it than I highly recommend you get it! This film really does belong up there with John Woo's pervious films. It's very violent with lots of action that will surely keep you interested. John Woo is the best! The ending was great, I will not spoil it! but there is one part I didn't really like, that's the whole Shoot than jump in the air kick routine Van Damme did while killing the bad guys seemed really out of place, it's like the kicks were just added because he's Van Damme and I guess John Woo thought most Americans would want to see Van Damme's sissy kicks. As for the actors..... Van Damme is a horrible one, I heard they were going to cast Kurt Russell as the lead instead which would have made the movie 100 times better cut or uncut! But alas! we were stuck with stiff Van Damme, his bad accent on top of another bad accent and his horrible hair. But all is forgiven when sexy Arnold Vosloo (Pik Van Cleaf) makes his way on to the screen, what a wonderful job he did! He literally stole the show from Van Damme with every sence they had together in my book. Lance Herkersion(sp) was also great! all the way through! These two worked great together as the bad guys, they will send chills down your spine, just the thought that there could be guys like them out in the world is really creepy! My favortie sence will have to be the introduction of Pik when he comes in contact with Chance for the first time in Randell Poe's office, the dude looked like the devil standing at that door! A job well done! I will rate this one (R-rated) with 3 stars, but the Uncut one deserves five stars all the way! the difference is, one is a Van Damme film, the other is a John Woo film!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: the begger gets the army
Review: van damme takes on an army one of the strongest coolist films evr to be seen as is worth to bu espeacily as cheep as this.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Doesn't Even Deserve One Star
Review: This movie blows. Jean Claude Van Damme is one of the worst actors ever to grace the silver screen. I feel sorry for the people who wrote nice reviews of this film because they obviously have no standards whatsoever. How can anyone possibly overlook the atrocious slow-motion sequences? If you want a real action film, rent Dirty Harry. Poor acting, horrid directing, and silly plotlines (was there a plot?) combine to make this one of the worst films I've ever had the displeasure to see.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great action movie
Review: Director John Woo doesn't disappoint. I have seen his Hong Kong films (highly recommended) and heard Hard Target was not up to par. Well, I liked it a lot. You get a lot of really cool action. It doesn't have wall-to-wall gunfighting like Woo's HK stuff, but that's okay, it's good to see Woo try more "American" types of action. He does it well.

Woo makes an excellent use of slow-motion here, as always. He uses a lot of slo-mo, and it's really cool, especially for Van Damme's great kicks. Very stylish. You gotta love it.

The story and characters are not great, which is not the Woo standard, but he was given a lackluster script, so it's hard to fault him for that.

If you like action movies, you'll like this. You get some cool stuff. Not a ton of gunfighting or martial arts, but there's a decent amount, plus some other action as well, like chases.

Don't be hesitant because of Van Damme. Hard Target is much better than Van Damme's other films. Go for it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Hard to Watch
Review: This is not my usual genre of film, but I bought it as I did "Diary of a Serial Killer" because Arnold Vosloo is a part of the cast, and I in common with many others have become an AV admirer. Although the premise of the film is somewhat far fetched, it is still inherently plausible and might have passed scutiny but for the unfortunate tendency of the villians to kill off as many of their clients as their victims. (Possibly the fault of the editing done for individual markets.) This made it almost funny--violent funny perhaps, but still amusing. At the film's attrition rate of millionaires, there couldn't be many of them left! As usual, Mr. Van Damme approached his character with an affect expressionless enough to have done Darth Vader proud. Mr. Hendriksen's character was almost as 2-dimensional as Snidely Whiplash, though not nearly as entertaining. The effort to give him depth was limited to a passion for the piano. Mr. Vosloo's character was quite well done. He seems to have the ability to imply depth to and a "story" behind each character he plays. Van Kleef is not so much a man with a history (although one can certainly envision a small boy, possibly from a good home, with the unfortunate habit of torturing local cats and pulling the wings off of butterflies) so much as a man with a definite destiny. If one could actually replay his life over and over again (other than on the video) one would always find that he ended the same way: perhaps not by the same means, or in the same place, or even by the same hands, but always young and violently. I had occasion to met people like him (and like some of his victims) while working in a trauma center in Manhattan, so I know such people actually exist. This is definitely a movie only for the martial arts afficianado or the AV fan club.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: GREAT!
Review: This is the best film that I have ever seen. There is alot of action in it and I think that everyone should watch the movie. Some parts are also a little bit funny, where Frick and Mr. Fouchon are chasing after Chance Boudreaux, and Natasha is not used to it. It's from 1993, but I got the DVD in Singapore last year, and I thought it was good straight away. ! MUST SEE MOVIE!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jean Claude Van Damme, A Fantastic Film
Review: Jean Claude Van Damme has long hair in this film. The movie takes place somewhere in New Orleans. The film has alot of action. Lance Henriksen[Aliens and Fox show Millenium]acts in this film, he plays the bad guy who goes against Van Damme. This movie has great fighting scenes from the protagonist. An excellent motion picture.


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