Hard Target (Special Edition): 4K UHD Review
Legendary Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo made his U.S. debut with 1993’s Hard Target, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. One of the other notable aspects of the production is that this marked the first time a Chinese director was hired to helm a major Hollywood film. Sam Raimi was brought in by Universal as basically a back-up incase Woo failed to deliver. Raimi was not only one of the film’s producers, but his brother Ted shows up on screen in a cameo. This week, the action-cult classic arrives on 4K UHD with the unrated international cut.
Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler) just arrived in New Orleans hoping to reconnect with her estranged father. When she arrives though, not only is he nowhere to be found, but she learns that her father was homeless and living on the streets for some time. While being assaulted by some locals, Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme) intervenes and saves Natasha. Because the city can be a dangerous place, she offers to pay Chance $100 per day to help her find her father. It is soon after that her father’s body is discovered, and Chance believes he was murdered.
In the film’s opening scenes, we see dear-old-dad being hunted by a group of people around New Orleans. Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and his right-hand-man, Pik van Cleaf (Arnold Vosloo) run a business in which they charge rich people $500k to hunt a human being that they have acquired. To keep it challenging, Emil looks for military trained vets, but only the homeless ones who do not have family looking for them. That was the mistake they made with Natasha’s father. They did not think anyone would miss him. Well, they now have their hands full with Chance and Emil is not very happy about it.
Ultimately Hard Target is a Van-Damme film and when it comes to the muscles-from-Brussels, we want to see the action above anything else and when it comes to a Woo film, we want to see birds flying in slow motion around the action. Yep, we get plenty of both. While I felt that the three films that Woo followed up with, Broken Arrow, Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II are better (mainly because they have better actors and more interesting characters in those), Hard Target for the most part gets the job done for action fans.
The new Dolby Vision transfer with HDR10 looks absolutely, incredible. This was taken from a 4K scan of the original camera negative, and it is leaps and bounds more detailed and impressive than the 1080p Blu-ray release. I went with the 5.1 Surround sound over the 2.0 lossless stereo and the track is quite solid. When you have a lot of action, explosions, gunfire, car/motorcycle chases and of course birds flapping their wings in slow motion, you want a track that can show that off and the 5.1 does just that.
While Hard Target isn’t my favorite 90’s Van-Damme film (I prefer Time Cop and Sudden Death), it is still a fun time and I highly recommend the 4K upgrade for fans.
Extras Include:
- Brand New 4K Restoration of the Unrated International Cut – From a 4K Scan of the Original Camera Negative!
- NEW Interview with Director John Woo
- NEW Interview with Actor Lance Henriksen
- NEW Interview with Actress Yancy Butler
- NEW Interview with Stunt Coordinator Billy Burton
- NEW Audio Commentary by Action Film Historians Brandon Bentley and Mike Leeder
- Theatrical Trailer (Newly Restored in HD)
- 1 Surround & 2.0 Lossless Stereo
- Optional English Subtitles
By: Marc Ferman