Hard Target

Sporting hair extensions and a Cajun accent, Van Damme plays Chance Boudreaux, a drifter who comes to the aid of one Natasha Binder (Butler) as she searches for her transient father in New Orleans. He turns up dead, the luckless prey in a deadly bloodsport: a clandestine safari through the urban jungle in which the very rich hunt and kill derelicts. Matters improve considerably once the hunt is on - the movie's firepower would shame the devil. It's what Hollywood wanted Woo for: bigger, brighter explosions. That we can hope for more is evinced by the film's most memorable sequence: a wounded black man stumbles through a busy main street begging for help, ignored by everyone except his hunters. As the man becomes resigned to his fate, Woo homes in on his face in three arresting jump-cut freeze-frames. The scene doesn't just betray an alien viewpoint, it distils an undertow of social alienation more sharply than any American director would have dreamed of.