The Grand Illusion

Chance Boudreaux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is an out-of-work, homeless merchant seaman and former Marine. He saves Natasha (Yancy Butler), a diner waitress, from a gang of thugs. He learns she's searching for her missing father and decides to help. Their trail leads to Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and Pik van Cleef (Arnold Vosloo), ruthless hunters and businessmen. Fouchon and Cleef hunt something different: homeless men in their own twisted recreational sport. Based on the 1932 film adaptation of Richard Connell's 1924 short story "The Most Dangerous Game" and directed by John Woo in his first U.S. film, Hard Target leaves no stone unturned in one of his most stylized films of the 1990s and arguably the best of his newfound career in North America.

“It’s a heightened brew of violence and style with both the surface and the texture of a good crazy action movie. Credit to Pfarrer or whoever came up with absurd ideas like Chance punching out a rattlesnake, biting its rattle off and leaving it as a sentient boobytrap. And it’s worth mentioning that this is one of the few movies where Wilford Brimley with a bow and arrow rides a horse in slow motion away from an explosion. That’s usually how I try to sell it to people.” Vern, outlawvern.com

“If Woo’s American films were coming out today, they’d be heralded as the unreconstructed works of an old master.” Matt Lynch

“Hard Target was a bad script, but we had some great action scenes, and John Woo made me look like a samurai with greasy hair.” Jean-Claude Van Damme