The Scott Adkins movies Hard Target 2 and Boyka: Undisputed have a major plot device in common, but the two use it very differently.
The Scott Adkins movies Hard Target 2 and Boyka: Undisputed share a key story element, with each using it very differently. As an off-shoot of Scott Adkins’s movies with Jean-Claude Van Damme, he also headlined the 2016 sequel Hard Target 2. While the film is a standalone sequel to Van Damme’s 1993 action movie Hard Target, it has another parallel in Adkins’s 2017 return to his signature role in Boyka: Undisputed.
In Hard Target 2, Adkins plays MMA fighter Wes “The Jailor” Baylor, a man haunted by the guilt of inadvertently killing his best friend Jonny (Troy Honeysett) in a championship title fight. Boyka: Undisputed uses that very concept when Boyka competes for a spot in an MMA tournament, only to unintentionally kill his opponent Viktor (Emilien De Falco). Boyka: Undisputed was actually filmed before Hard Target 2 and released after, while their shared foundational concept seemingly did little to impact the reception to either.
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Nor should it have, as Hard Target 2 and Boyka: Undisputed tell otherwise radically different stories with the latter also completely closing the book on Boyka as an Undisputed villain. Hard Target 2 follows Hard Target’s template with Baylor fleeing hunters in the jungles of Thailand as a spin on The Most Dangerous Game. Meanwhile, Boyka: Undisputed sees Boyka fight to pay off the debts of his deceased opponent’s widow to a Russian crime boss. Most importantly, Baylor’s and Boyka’s arcs of dealing with the guilt take them down different roads with the two beginning at very different starting points.
Hard Target 2&Boyka: UndisputedUse Tragedy To Tell Different Character Arcs
In Hard Target 2, Baylor is fraught with guilt over the fact that his opponent was his best friend, and believes he allowed his zeal to win to make him lethally aggressive in their fight. After the Scott Adkins action movie ends with Baylor’s victory over the hunters, he receives a letter from his friend’s widow Kay (Katrina Grey) informing him that she does not hold any bitterness towards him and that Jonny was a fighter to his last breath. With Kay encouraging Baylor to let go of his guilt, his journey in Hard Target 2 is about finally being able to no longer blame himself for the tragic accident.
Boyka, on the other hand, begins Boyka: Undisputed grapples with guilt over his numerous past crimes, which include taking lives. Driven by his faith in God and determination to be the most pure fighter he can be, Boyka’s pleas of forgiveness to his opponent’s widow Alma (Teodora Duhovnikova) are met with a stern rejection. Having freed Alma from the clutches of the mob after many martial arts fights, Boyka ultimately finds himself back in prison at the end of the movie, with Alma visiting him and telling Boyka she forgives him for her husband’s death. In doing so, Alma frees Boyka of his guilt over the man he once was.
While each uses the same specific element of an MMA fighter unintentionally killing an opponent, Hard Target 2 and Boyka: Undisputed both thoroughly deliver as Scott Adkins-led martial arts films. Additionally, Hard Target 2 and Boyka: Undisputed apply that story to very different character arcs. For Baylor in Hard Target 2, he learns not to be held back by the tragic loss of his friend that was not his fault. In Boyka: Undisputed, The Most Complete Fighter in the World at last redeeming himself of his past sins by sacrificing his freedom for another’s (while setting up an amazing Undisputed 5 along the way).