Taglines: Catch him if you can.
Hard Target movie storyline. In New Orleans, a homeless veteran named Douglas Binder (Chuck Pfarrer) is the target of a hunt. He is given a belt containing $10,000 and told that he must reach the other side of town where he would then win the money and his life.
Hunting him is the hunt organizer Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen), his lieutenant Pik Van Cleef (Arnold Vosloo), a businessman named Mr. Lopaki who has paid $500,000 for the opportunity to hunt a human, and mercenaries including Stephan (Sven-Ole Thorsen) and Peterson (Jules Sylvester). Binder fails to reach his destination and is shot by three crossbow bolts. Van Cleef retrieves the money belt.
While searching for her father, Binder’s long-estranged daughter Natasha (Yancy Butler) is attacked by a group of thugs who saw that she had a lot of cash earlier. She is saved by a homeless man with exceptional martial-arts skills named Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a former Marine Force Recon. Chance is initially hesitant to involve himself with her mission, but as his merchant seaman union dues are in arrears he reluctantly allows Natasha to hire him as her guide and bodyguard during her search. Meanwhile, Chance’s homeless friend Elijah Roper (Willie C. Carpenter) is the next to participate in Fouchon’s hunt, and is also killed.
Natasha discovers that her father distributed fliers for a seedy recruiter named Randal Poe (Eliott Keener) who has been secretly supplying Fouchon with homeless men with war experience and no family ties. Natasha questions Randal about her father’s death, but they are discovered by an eavesdropping Van Cleef. Fouchon and Van Cleef beat Randal to punish him for sending them a man with an interested family. New Orleans detective Mitchell (Kasi Lemmons) is reluctant to investigate Binder’s disappearance until his charred body is discovered in the ashes of a derelict building.
Hard Target is a 1993 American action film directed by Hong Kong film director John Woo in his American debut. The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux, an out-of-work Cajun merchant seaman who saves a young woman, named Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler), from a gang of thugs in New Orleans. Chance learns that Binder is searching for her missing father (Chuck Pfarrer), and agrees to aid Binder in her search. Boudreaux and Binder soon learn that Binder’s father has died at the hands of wealthy sportsman Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation. The screenplay was written by Chuck Pfarrer and is based on the 1932 film adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game.
Hard Target (1993)
Directed by: John Woo
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Lance Henriksen, Yancy Butler, Wilford Brimley, Arnold Vosloo, Lenore Banks, Kasi Lemmons, Willie C. Carpenter, Kasi Lemmons
Screenplay by: Chuck Pfarrer
Production Design by: Phil Dagort
Cinematography by: Russell Carpenter
Film Editing by: Bob Murawski
Costume Design by: Karyn Wagner
Set Decoration by: Michele Poulik
Art Direction by: Philip Messina
Music by: Graeme Revell, Tim Simonec
MPAA Rating: R for a great amount of strong violence, and for language.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: August 20, 1993
Hits: 110
