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| This film is proudly bought to you by Garnier Frustis. |
Much like a couple who are having trouble conceiving, this
baby’s been 4 years in the making. I'm talking about the review here. It's
taken me that long to build up the will power to sit down and watch this
fucking thing.
Jesus Christ, what am I doing with my life?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to John Woo's Hard Target;
a story of mullets, kicks and epic splits.
I’ve found that most action of this time period didn’t really
need a lot of story, or character development, or point. Just as long as you
had a big name, some muscles and an explosion or two, that shit was guaranteed
to sell tickets. And with the exception of maybe Chad Lowe there weren’t many
names bigger, or worth more points in scrabble, than Jean-Claude Van Damme.
When I was a kid only 3 things mattered; school holidays, that
weird feeling I sometimes got in my pants when watching late night TV, and Jean-Claude
Van Damme - and not always in that order.
Like most people who lived through the 90’s; he was a very
prominent figure in my childhood. He was Guile in that shit-awful Street
Fighter movie. He was Guile in that shit-awful Street Fighter: The Movie - The
Game game. He was Time Cop in that movie about time cops.... what was it? Oh,
yeah. TimeCop. Hell, he was in like 18 movies over the course of the 90's, and
that's a fairly conservative estimate. Some alarmists would put that figure as
high as 19. That's no joke. Google that shit.
The important thing to take away was that he was a big deal.
Like, Steven Seagal big. Ask a kid these days who Jean-Claude Van Damme is and
they'd probably say "that guy from the Volvo commercials, right?" or
less accurately "Isn't he the captain on The Next Generation?". And
that's not necessarily a bad thing, because the world has moved on since then,
and left poor old JCVD behind, doing splits in the dirt like a surprisingly
flexible hobo.
Hard target is probably the seventh best JCVD movie, behind
Street Fighter, Bloodsport, that one with two Van Dammes, Universal Soldier,
TimeCop and that one with Dennis Rodman. I mean, come on, it's called Hard
Target. How much better could it get? The answer is 'considerably'.
First off - the plot. Jean-Claude plays Chance Boudreaux, an
out-of-work Cajun merchant seaman and drifter who comes across a woman being
attacked by a group of New Orlean thugs. After kicking all their arses, he
learns that the woman is looking for her homeless father and agrees to help her
find him. He soon learns, however, that her father is dead; hunted for sport in
a deadly game created by a wealthy lunatic named Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen)
who coerces bums and other degenerates into his trap with the promise of
$10,000.
"Hold on, back it up. Did I just read that right?" you
might be asking. And yes, you did. Unless you're dyslexic, in which case Fkuc
Uyo. But seriously, he's meant to be Cajun? Is he also deaf? Because that
accent is anything but Cajun. It sounds sort of Belgian to me.
And I know that Van Damme is supposed to be a drifter, but why
does he have to have a mullet? Is that just a thing we now associate with those
from a lower socio-economic bracket - bad haircuts? Seriously, it's so
distracting. Like, am I watching an action movie or an REO Speedwagon
concert? Why does he look like a buff 1980's John Farnham pretending to be a
homeless Vietnam veteran? Why is Lance Henriksen given real money to act?
Anyway, Van Damme snap-kicks his way through the grizzly
underworld of New Orleans - with enough slow-mo punches and unconvincing stunts
to sate any appetite - until he can get to Fouchon and his Lieutenant Pik Van
Cleef (Arnold Vosloo - who you might know from The Mummy, and who looks like a
fat Billy Zane). This comes to a climax with a shoot-out in a warehouse filled
with Mardi Gras floats where Van Damme descends from the roof on a giant
pelican while firing a shotgun. I'm not
too sure of the symbolism here, but I cried uncontrollably. It is at this point
that he chokes a bad guy with his shotgun, but another bad guy comes upon him,
so instead of using the shotgun he's clearly carrying, he somehow makes the
shotgun disappear from the next shot, pulls out a pistol from the pants of the
guy he was choking and uses it upside down to shoot this new guy twenty nine
fucking times (yes - I counted, and yes - I realise that
highlights my autism), despite the pistol only having a 12 round magazine the
next two times he uses it. Then he roundhouse kicks him, just for good measure
and then apologises to him for ruining his
shirt. What a dick.
So all the goons die in a hail of bullets and shitty one-liners
and he finally gets to killing the main villains by shooting one and then
blowing the other up by putting a grenade down his pants.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and I once sat in on a
Women's Studies lecture.
The only thing hard about this movie was my penis while watching
it. The whole film was simply an elaborate ruse to perform gymnastics routines
in tight jeans. Some highlights include the trademark John Woo slow motion
doves in flight, Lance Henriksen
playing a piano that looks like it's made from H.R. Giger's fleshlights and Van
Damme punching a rattle snake in the face. That's not a typo.
I never thought I'd have to commit this to writing, but the last
thing I ever want to hear again is Van Damme whispering "I was helping her
find her daddy" with a look on his face that suggested he was looking to
be her daddy. The movie was shit. Just so, so shit. I'd rather jam a packet of
X-Acto knife blades down my piss-hole than watch it again. It was garbage, and
I hate you for having suggested it, you utter bastard.
11/10 - Movie of the Year - all years.
Someone please kill me.
