HARD TARGET: Good Whiskey Make Jackrabbit Slap De Bear!

Hard Target (1993) – Directed by John Woo – Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, Yancy Butler, Lance Henriksen, Arnold Vosloo, Kasi Lemmons, Chuck, Pfarrer, and Wilford Brimley.

I love this movie.

HARD TARGET is pretty much the perfect B-movie action film. There’s an insanely talented director teaming up with a solid action star in an easy-to-follow story with plenty of cool action sequences. Is that not enough for you? Okay, we’ve got a ridiculous greasy mullet, Lance Henriksen angrily calling somebody a buffalo, plenty of slow-mo, Arnold Vosloo, a horribly miscast Yancy Butler, effectively used slo-mo, and Wilfred Brimley speaking Cajun.

Let me repeat that last part: WE HAVE WILFORD BRIMLEY SPEAKING CAJUN!

All other arguments are, as the saying goes, now invalid because, as Mr. Brimley so eloquently puts it, “Mopofeesopotone!”

I think.

Does it matter?

HARD TARGET was John Woo’s first American film, and reports are that he originally wanted Kurt Russell is this sort-of remake of The Most Dangerous Game. Truthfully, I would have preferred Russel to Jean-Claude Van Damme but Woo uses Van Damme here as well as any director possibly could and, truthfully, this is a better movie because of him. Woo has Van Damme speak little which adds to the overall effect when he does talk, and Woo’s highly-stylized camera work and editing work beautifully with Van Damme’s style of punching and kicking (lots of spinning around leg sweeps and kicks to the face, mostly).

Set in New Orleans, Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) arranges live, human hunts through the city to wealthy hunters who want the challenge of killing humans. The hunted are recruited from the city’s homeless population, favoring military vets to make it more of a challenge. Fouchon and his right hand man, Pik Van Cleef (Vosloo) oversee the hunt, and as the film opens, they’re tracking Douglas Binder (Chuck Pfarrer). The deal made with the homeless vets is that if they reach the bridge at the other end of the city, they’ll walk away with their life and $10,000. Binder doesn’t make it, and a little while later, his daughter Natasha (Butler) arrives looking for him.

I like Yancy Bulter but she’s not right for the part of Natasha, which calls for someone who can play afraid and confused and weepy at a higher level. With Butler, I’m expecting her to jump right into the action, but she spends the first half of the movie looking unsure of herself and unable to do anything without someone helping her.

She goes to the cops for help, but Detective Mitchell (Kasi Lemmons) can only do so much and Butler pouts and storms off. She ends up in the same diner as Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme), who saves her when some local thugs want to rough her up after she exits. Natasha wants him to help her find her dad but he refuses. Chance is a seaman but his card has been temporarily revoked because he roughed up the wrong captain, so he agrees to help her for the exact amount of money he needs to get reinstated with the union.

This leads to an inevitable confrontation with Fouchon and Van Cleaf, who decide that they’ve overstayed their welcome in New Orleans and will leave once they kill Chance. Insert lots of fighting and chasing. The fights are solid, but the real joy is in watching Fouchon lose his cool. Henriksen is amazing in HARD TARGET, and when he starts losing his sh*t, the film gets really good. “You are a f*cking buffalo!” he yells at one of his hunters when the chase for Boudreaux hits the swamps.

There’s a perfect mix of fantastic and ridiculous action, which helps to keep the film from falling into a rut. On the fantastic end, we’ve got a warehouse full of discarded Mardi Gras floats, and Chance descends from the ceiling on a swan, shooting at Fouchon’s men with his shotgun. On the ridiculous end, we’ve got Chance punching out a venomous snake. Good stuff.

Chance eventually makes his way to his uncle’s house, and that’s where we get Wilford Brimley and his Cajun accent. No one dislikes having Wilford Brimley around in this film, except for the poor horse that has to cart him around.

HARD TARGET does an excellent job with a simple narrative, continually comparing Fouchon’s wealth with Chance’s poverty, which ends with Boudreaux answering Fouchon’s question of why he’s gotten involved by saying, “Poor people get bored, too.” It’s a clever line, but not a truthful one, as Chance was clearly involved to get his money to go to sea, and then at some point to help Natasha, and at another point to get revenge for Detective Mitchell being gunned down.

I’ve watched this movie a whole lot over the years and I never get tired of it. Woo and Van Damme have both had a checkered career in America, with more misses than hits in their filmography, but HARD TARGET is some of the best work both men have produced on these shores.

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual

Alien vs. Predator (2004; Extended Cut) – Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson – Starring Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner, and Colin Salmon.

Earlier, I wrote over 2,000 words on ALIEN RESURRECTION, and could have written 1,000 more. Right now, I’m going to struggle to write 1,000 on ALIEN VS. PREDATOR.

Jumping way back into the franchise’s past to plop down in our contemporary period, AVP tells the story of an expedition into an underground pyramid. The expedition finds themselves caught between aliens and Predators, who run around the pyramid killing each other as part of a Predator manhood ritual. Predators kill humans. Aliens kill humans. Predators kill aliens. Aliens kill Predators. Predators win. Spaceship arrives. Aliens get final revenge. Hybrid baby is born.

AVP is certainly not a bad movie. In fact, almost stubbornly it’s an enjoyable enough popcorn movie if-

Right. There’s this. The first time I watched AVP I was at a friend’s house. I’d bought the movie just for the occasion, and being a fan of the ALIEN and PREDATOR franchises, I was ready for some popcorn goodness. (Although, we were actually eating brats and not popcorn, so I suppose technically I was ready for some bratwurst goodness.)

When I arrived, I was moderately pleased that a non-ALIEN, non-PREDATOR person had arrived because she was kinda hot. Unfortunately, she was also in the mood to shred everything about this film, so I spent much of the night happily checking out her legs and unhappily listening to her yap on excessively and loudly about the movie’s stupidity. I was both turned on and off, but by the time an alien and Predator faced off, I just wanted to watch the movie without her, or hang with her without the movie.

Anyway, AVP is an enjoyable enough popcorn movie if you’re into aliens and Predators. Or Sanaa Lathan. And since I’m into all three there’s plenty here to keep me interested, even if I’m never all that engaged.

As AVP opens, my initial thoughts were that this movie was rather tedious to watch. Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henrikson) of the Weyland Corporation (this is their pre-Yutani days) notices an odd heat signature beneath the Antarctic ice, so he assembles a team of experts from around the globe to go investigating with him. Most of the people he brings in are nameless men and women in large winter coats, but there are a few prominent members of the squad: guide Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan), archaeologist Sebastian De Rosa (Raoul Bova), and … well, that’s it, really. Everyone else is basically, “Nervous Guy with Two Kids,” “Super Cool Assistant,” “Predator Fodder #3,” and “Alien Fodder #6.”

The expedition arrives at an abandoned whaling station that sits on top of the buried pyramid, where they discover a perfectly carved tunnel has been bored overnight. It can’t happen, yet there it is, so they do the only smart thing and go down into tunnel to investigate the pyramid. What hurts AVP through this point is that Alexa doesn’t want to be here, and I generally can’t stand protagonists who don’t want to be here. There’s also some forced helicopter and SUV-garnered camaraderie between Alexa and the Nervous Guy with Two Kids and then Alexa and Sebastian that doesn’t work.

Another negative is that AVP is the kind of film that never looks like anything but a movie. Everything looks like a set that was constructed last week. I don’t believe this whaling station exists or that the pyramid exists or that anyone was every sacrificed here. Even the Predators look phony, like they’re going to a cosplay convention instead of going to fight to the death against aliens. It’s a minor point and doesn’t ruin the film for me, but it is a constant visual reminder that this is all make believe.

When Weyland’s expedition hits the pyramid, there’s some puzzles to solve that seem ripped from an old video game. At least when we get to the pyramid things start happening, though I don’t know why they didn’t just start the movie en route to build some momentum.

Once the expedition unlocks a drawer with some weapons left for the Predators, the movie really picks up steam and, much to my surprise, becomes a rather enjoyable watch. Sebastian figures out that the pyramid is a manhood ritual, where young men from space come down to fight the “serpents” (what they call the aliens) to prove themselves.

As long as the aliens and Predators are fighting, I’m happy. There’s some good battles and some good visuals and a decent amount of tension. Good, not great. (Though there’s one slow-motion shot of a facehugger jumping at a Predator that’s pretty darn awesome.) I like how the Predator doesn’t kill Weyland at first because he sees the old man is sick, and I like how Weyland then stubbornly tries to kill the Predator anyway. I like how the film does what it can to personalize certain aliens and Predators by giving them noticeable injuries; it’s a small thing but it really helps to add a bit of attachment to these enemies.

Alexa and Sebastian eventually decide to ally themselves with the Predators, doing the old “an enemy of an enemy is my friend” bit, but they still have to prove themselves to the Predators because it’s not like the Predators and aliens are fighting over who gets assistance from the humans.

But really, it’s just fun to watch these two monster franchises collide. Would I have handled all of this differently? Absolutely. I don’t think we need humans in these stories, but the movie studios do, and the film minimizes their impact rather quickly. As I said, they’re just fodder for the aliens and Predators and that works enough for me. AVP isn’t a great movie, but it’s a decent amount of fun.

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ALIEN / PREDATOR Review Index

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality
ALIENS: My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.
ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space
ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual
ALIEN VS. PRDATOR: REQUIEM: Small Town America Kills Two Franchises at Once

ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space

Alien 3 (1992; Theatrical Cut) – Directed by David Fincher – Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Paul McGann, Danny Webb, Pete Postlethwaite, and Lance Henriksen.

ALIEN 3 is a grim movie, soaked in murky olives and browns, but a nonetheless engaging movie until it makes the completely boneheaded decision to off the only two supporting characters it spent any real time developing. From then on, it’s just a movie about killing.

And fire.

Lots of fire.

I want to love ALIEN 3, but I can’t. The opening half of the film is very strong, as first time director David Fincher creates an impressive world for our latest alien installment. Picking up where ALIENS left off, we’re inside the Sulaco as Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop are sleeping in their stasis pods. (Well, Bishop’s not really sleeping so much as he’s been ripped apart and powered off.) The opening titles are intercut with a facehugger crawling over the pods and then attaching itself to an unseen face. A fire starts, the escape pod is jettisoned, and crashes on Fury 161, a male-only penal colony.

Ripley survives. Everyone else dies.

ALIENS director James Cameron has said that he considers the demise of Hicks, Bishop, and Newt as a “slap in the face” to both him and the fans. I can understand that, but I don’t agree with it.

There are two ways that I like to evaluate deaths in fiction: emotionally and narratively. Emotionally, I hate that these three are dead. In a narrative sense, however, it does work. Ripley is a survivor, after all, and their deaths are just an extension of that premise. It’s cruel and harsh and not what I wanted, but as a plot, it’s not a horrible idea.

For the remainder of the film’s first half, we get to see Ripley try to figure out what happened on board the Sulaco and whether an alien is responsible. The film also starts building up the secondary characters. Fury 161 is a corporation prison planet. Weyland-Yutani wanted to shut the prison down, but the inmates ask to stay because they’ve found God and the corporation lets them stay on as a custodial force.

There are no women on Fury and the Warden (Brian Glover) wants to keep it that way. As soon as Ripley comes to his attention he sends for a rescue ship to come pick her up and tells Clemens (Charles Dance), Fury’s doctor, to keep her locked away from the prison population. Ripley and Clemens ignore the Warden’s request because that would make for a boring movie. Ripley gets Clemens to perform an autopsy on Newt and it’s a pretty brutal scene. Ripley has obviously become hardened by everything that’s happened, but watching her force Clemens to cut open Newt is pretty darn brutal.

An alien has survived, too, of course, and he comes bursting out of a dog. Gross but it’s a well-played sequence as the dog is going through all sorts of convulsions as the prisoners are holding a funeral for Hicks and Newt, who get tossed into the prison’s big furnace.

The alien ends up killing a couple of inmates and the Warden ends up blaming a deranged prisoner named Golic (Paul McGann) and disbelieving the whole alien angle.

Through this part of the movie, I’m kinda digging ALIEN 3. Is it as good as the two earlier installments? Not even close, but it’s not bad, either. I like the set up of having all of this action happen on a prison planet where the inmates insist they’ve found God. Nothing like a murderous alien monster to put these new ideals and morals to the test. We’ve also got three solid secondary characters in Clemens, the Warden, and Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the prison’s religious leader.

You can see the tensions starting to form as these three men will work with and against Ripley as the alien threat increases. We’ve got the aliens, the prisoners, a closed facility, and a young but clearly talented director ready to put all of these elements into motion. What could possibly screw this up?

Killing two of them off right away would do it, and that’s exactly what the film does for reasons I cannot figure out.

Clemens is killed in front of Ripley, who freaks and runs to the cafeteria, where the Warden is killed right in front of her.

What? Who thought this was a good idea? Who thought offing the two secondary characters the film has spent the most time building up was a good idea? With Clemens and the Warden gone, there’s a massive personality void in the film that Fincher tries to fill with all sorts of killing and fire and planning. Dutton is a great actor but he can’t carry the entirety of the non-Ripley portions of the film. As a result, it’s just a well shot bunch of rather meaningless action.

The feud between Fincher and FOX is pretty darn legendary. Fincher is the only director of the four ALIEN movies that’s had nothing to do with any of the re-releases, as the studio apparently re-cut the film without his approval after he’d turned in his cut and before it hit the theaters. There were massive problems on the set (they began shooting without a completed script), so who knows how much Fincher is to blame for the second half of the movie.

Whether it’s Fincher’s fault or the studio’s, the second of ALIEN 3 ruins the experience. Ripley finds out she’s got the alien Queen inside of her, which is a nice twist, but it just reinforces that the film spent an hour building up Clemens and the Warden only to jettison them. The corporation’s rescue squad shows up to try and take Ripley in because they still want the aliens for their bio-weapons division.

Yawn.

How about a film where they’ve got the aliens instead of yet another movie where this sits in the background?

Ripley ends up tossing herself into the furnace just as the alien Queen comes bursting out of her chest, and it’s a nice ending but an empty one. I do like how the aliens have chosen Ripley to be the host for their new Queen because it shows that they are not simply killing/reproduction machines. Now, maybe the fachugger chose Ripley because she was the healthiest and strongest survivor of the event on LV-426, but it certainly plays as a personal attack.

ALIEN 3 starts out strongly enough that it’s a shame to watch it sputter and clank its way to the end. The prison population could have served as an excellent cast of characters with which to play out this latest installment, bu the film isn’t interested enough in developing their characters for me to care about them.

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ALIEN / PREDATOR Review Index

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality
ALIENS: My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.
ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space
ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual
ALIEN VS. PRDATOR: REQUIEM: Small Town America Kills Two Franchises at Once