Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

phanthinga How often do you see Van Damme rocking a ridiculous mullet and sucker punch a rattlesnake then bites off it tail ?Chances are small cause he only does all that in Hard Target his best movie in my opinion and directed by John-woo a master of action cinema who bring his own style of action"gun-fu" to Hollywood for the first time ever.This movie is really awesome with all the bullet flying,fire blazing and Van Damme in his prime giving all his strengh to flip over anything that possible while also dual-wielding guns out of a horde of bad guys hunting homeless people for sport lead by Lance Henriksen.The final shoot-out at the abandoned werehouse is my favorite for how over the top it is with the violence and gun-fight

rohanm546 This is a nice movie.Saw this first on HBO. In my childhood, That was the time when jean-Claude's career was at the top. Nice action, superb stunts, as specially the bike one on the bridge. Nice star cast. Every one did a great job and justice to their role. A treat for van damn fan's and also a 90's action flick. Good direction by John Woo. In all good movie to watch for its action.

Idiot-Deluxe In 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme was at the peak of his powers and popularity and in August of that year saw the release of his best and most exciting movie: Hard Target. This time Van Damme was directed by veteran Chinese action-film director John Woo - and what a utterly thrilling combination of talents and ability it turned out to be!In his American film debut Woo and Van Damme made a masterpiece of action, ablaze in a fury of gun battles, neck-breaking flying kicks and just overall killer stunt-work. To me, Woo's most important contribution to the picture, is his utterly captivating camera-work and razor-sharp (often complex) film editing. These two qualities place Hard Target far above most other movies of the genre, I'm especially fond of Woo's liberal use of tracking shots (that great moving camera work!) one of his several trademarks. What Woo's cinematography and editing produce is a very vivid and physically visceral film experience. The action scene's are extremely impactful and grandiose, having more snap to them then most films of the genre and the gunplay in this movie is amazingly intense and exciting and, to great effect, they often go overboard in the "squibs and blood-packs department". It's a terrible shame those two talents Van Damme/Woo never worked with each other again - it should have been the starting of a dynasty. Factually speaking, a majority of the fans who are familiar with Jon Woo's American films also agree, that Hard Target (his first) is the best of the lot. I certainly second that notion.The casting, for the most part, is terrific, especially the main baddies: Lance Henriksen as Mr. Fouchon and Arnold Vosloo as Pik, I think Vosloo turns out to be one of the best and most convincing hit-men ever portrayed in film and he's involved in almost all of the gun fights. Yancey Butler in her film debut is only so-so, though it doesn't matter much, because she's completely interchangeable with three of four dozen other actresses of the era - any one of which would have done as good a job or better. The movie takes place in and around New Orleans, several great action sequences make use of the sites of said city, they go all over it as a matter of fact and later on the chase continues into the surrounding bayou and that's when the movie really kicks into full-speed. While meeting Uncle Douvee (thats Wilford Brimley as some kind of crusty old moon-shinin' cajun hermit) along the way, who's a relative of Chance Boudreaux (Van Dammes character), who colorfully enhances the movie. Even some horseback riding action finds it's way into the mix, leading up to an absolutely enthrallingly explosive finale (very stylishly staged Mr. Woo) in an abandoned warehouse. A quick heads-up: Expect to see Lance Henriksen explode across scene in what has to be one of cinema's funniest death scenes. Hard Target is undoubtedly, in grand thundering fashion, the high-point of Van Damme's career - in other words it's his best movie! None of that direct-to-video garbage he's been churning out since the late-90's counts.As many other reviewers have stated before, I just HAVE TO make mention of Van Damme's unbelievably super-awesome MULLET! Wow, now that THING is just beyond awesome, rightfully titled by another reviewer to be "a pantheon-level mullet". In any case it's certainly one of the best (if not the best) movie mullets of all time - Period.Various prints of this spectacularly exciting action film exist, however, UN-like most of the time, it's the Euro-print that is the less edited and more violent print, which..... you might have guessed, is the better print. Up until about 2014 I was only familiar with the somewhat choppy, subdued and >>> !!! NEEDLESSLY EDITED !!! <<< US-version. I'm super-glad to say I own a region-free blu-ray copy of this film, that features the Euro-version, which is definitely the superior presentation. It's the vision that Woo and Van Damme had in mind for the audience all along. As you may already know it was the US ratings-board who were dead-set on bringing John Woo (and his reputation of making hyper-violent movies) to a heel. Which in fact qualifies them as: Meddlesome Morons. I spit on you POS. In the end, 23 years later, time has proved to be very kind to this film and it's definitely still every bit as exciting now as it was then. Hot damn action films were awesome in the early 90's!Oh yah one last point, the SOUND of this movie is fantastic and is just as hard-hitting as the visuals - so crank it to 10!

Mr-Fusion There's a hard edge to "Hard Target" befitting of a John Woo actioner. It's got all of the man's touches: balletic shootouts, dual-wielding Berettas, those damn doves, slo-mo peppered throughout. And I found the subject matter fairly dark: rich jagoffs hunting man for sport - homeless veterans, to be precise. My issue with this movie, aside from the pacing issues (it ever really takes of, it marches)is that such a harsh premise is played for schlock value.It's what this movie is "on paper" that I found so amusing. The bad guys here are led by Lance Henriksen (legit) . . . and that dude from "The Mummy". Van Damme here is unleashing pain with a mullet of almost superhero proportions (I dug that tuck-n-roll over a speeding SUV). And then at some point, very late in the game, Wilford Brimley shows up as some sort of Bayou hillbilly. What was the casting director smoking on that day? The icing on this weird cake of doom is Sam Raimi's name with a producer credit.WTH, indeed.6/10