Hard Target | Final Shootout With Jean-Claude Van Damme

Hard Target is a 1993 action film directed by Hong Kong film director John Woo in his U.S. debut. The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux, an out-of-work homeless Cajun merchant seaman and former United States Force Recon Marine 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.

They soon learn that Binder’s father has died at the hands of hunt organisers Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and Pik van Cleef (Arnold Vosloo), a ruthless businessman and his right-hand mercenary, who arrange the hunting of homeless men as a form of recreational sport. The screenplay was written by Pfarrer and is based on the 1932 film adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game”.

Interesting Facts About “Hard Target 1993”

Hard Target was Woo’s first U.S. film and was also the first major Hollywood film made by a Chinese director. Universal Pictures was nervous about having Woo direct a feature and sent in director Sam Raimi to look over the film’s production and to take Woo’s place as director if he were to fail. Woo went through several scripts finding mostly martial arts films with which he was not interested.

The film went on to top out domestically at $32,589,677 in total ticket sales through a 5-week theatrical run. Internationally, the film took in an additional $41,600,000 in box office business for a combined worldwide total of $74,189,677. For 1993 as a whole, the film worldwide would cumulatively rank at a box office performance position of 23.