HARD TARGET, with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen, Yancy Butler. Directed by John Woo. Category II. On the Panasia circuit.
THE film that put the ''Woo'' into Hollywood has caused a fair bit of excitement, seemingly as some kind of longed-for validation of the Hong Kong Way of making movies among international, especially American, audiences.
The name John Woo is now ineffably hip, not only in the United States, but also in Europe, where his earlier Hong Kong action movie Hard Boiled is now enjoying a limited commercial release.
Woo's stock appears to have run especially high with Hollywood's hottest whiz kid Quentin Tarantino (who lifted and extended the Reservoir Dogs-style Mexican stand-off from Woo's signature piece The Killer, where two men each have a gun pointed in eachother's face) and schlock-meister Sam Raimi, whose own debt to Tsui Hark runs deep (the latter produced The Killer, the former co-produced this one).
Many critics seem to have wanted Woo's first English-language feature to be something of a landmark, and many trendier Western critics seem to have been prepared to misinterpret its many absurd and clumsy moments as signs of a fresh, off-the-wall approach. In the absence of any real virtues, it has been necessary instead to praise the film for its faults.
Teaming Woo with Van Damme - himself a veteran of a few Hong Kong action movies - might have seemed an inspired idea, but the communication problems must have been hell for the US crew when neither director nor star spoke particularly good English (it also means that neither was in much of a position to judge the quality of the dialogue).
Although made in the traditional US way, with synch sound, Hard Target feels and often sounds like a dubbed-over cheapie. The dialogue reeks of that clipped, unnatural, made-to-fit variety that accompanies many a kung fu flick or spaghetti western.