HONG Kong's John Woo is La-La Land's hype of the month, having recently finished directing his first Hollywood film, Hard Target, starring another local favourite, Belgian muscleboy Jean-Claude Van Damme.
The ''Muscles from Brussels'' first made it big in Hong Kong movies, but has apparently abandoned these shores in favour of fame and fortune in the US. But that is not to say his films are getting any better, especially if Nowhere to Run (1993, ERA, 95 minutes) is anything to go by.
If you have seen one Van Damme film, you have seen them all: here, he plays an escaped convict wrongly imprisoned. Beneath those bulging biceps and pristine pectorals, we are told, beats the heart of a '90s man: sensitive and caring.
So when he finds out nasty land developers are threatening widow Rosanna Arquette and her cute kids, Van Damme has to leap in to help.
Bones break, jaws dislocate, barns burst into flames and cars explode - but it is just another day on the Van Damme farm, folks. Respected British actor Joss Ackland plays yet another baddy; he has never been the same since he agreed to star in a Pet Shop Boys music video.
Nowhere to Run is average action-movie fodder; let us hope Van Damme does not let the side down in Hard Target.
The lovely Arquette co-stars with yet another actor whose thespian qualifications had become distinctly dubious - the late Anthony Perkins - in the made-for-television feature In the Deep Woods (1992, Columbia Tristar, 92 minutes).