Hard Target 2 (2016)

Hard Target 2 (2016)

Starring: Scott Adkins, Robert Knepper, Ann Truong, Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, Adam Saunders, Jamie Timony
Director: Roel Reiné
Action Director: Seng Kawee, Supoj Khaowwong, Kazu Patrick Kong

 

As the 2010s drew to a close, the 80s Nostalgia Train was reaching the end of the line. Films Ready Player One (2018) and Joker (2019) pointed out both the folly in living for old popular culture and the silliness of glorifying a decade that wasn’t necessarily as glorious as films made it out to be. It was thus inevitable that Hollywood would move in the direction of 90s Nostalgia. We saw it in 2017 with the ill-fated attempt to modernize The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers to modern adolescent sensibilities. We’ve also seen reboots and continuations of popular 90s sitcoms like Full House and Boy Meets World.

One particularly interesting phenomena has been the belated sequel. The year 2016 saw two examples: Kindergarten Cop 2 and this film. As I write this, a sequel-cum-reboot to the 1995 Jean-Claude Van Damme action thriller Sudden Death is in the works with Michael Jai White in the starring role. Reaction to Kindergarten Cop 2, which traded Arnold Schwarzeneggar for Dolph Lundgren, has been rather dire, with a 4.5 out of 10 rating on the Internet Movie Database.

Hard Target is one of the most beloved of all Jean-Claude Van Damme films, plus is notable for being director John Woo’s first Hollywood film after making some of the best gun-oriented action films of all time in Hong Kong. This sequel, however, comes across as almost a stealth remake of Lionheart in its opening scenes, after which it becomes an action thriller more reminiscent of 1994’s Surviving the Game than a sequel to the 1993 classic.

Scott Adkins play Wes “The Jailer” Bailor, an up-and-coming mixed martial artist whose next bout is against his best friend and training partner. During their fight, Wes loses his cool and goes buck wild on his friend, ultimately killing him. The karma costs to killing somone ends his fighting career, while guilt at the victim being his friend pushes Wes away from friends and family and he goes to Bangkok to drink away his sorrows. He also supports himself in illegal street brawls, very similar to Lionheart. After a fight with a more posh clientele, Wes is approached by a man named Jonah Aldrich (Robert Knepper, The Transporter 3 and Hitman), who invites Wes to Myanmar for a big fight. When Wes arrives, he learns that Jonah is Southeast Asia’s answer to Count Zaroff, or more to the point, Emil Fouchon. Wes now has to make his way to the Thai border before Jonah’s clients kill him.

Aside from the whole humans-hunting-humans angle, this film does not resemble Hard Target save a few superficial stylistic touches. When the film switches to Bangkok, we see Wes sharing a shack with…white doves! While the doves had something of a symbolic meaning in some of John Woo’s Hong Kong films, their inclusion in the 1993 Hard Target was a little derivative. When you have a derivative of a derivative, like in this film, it does absolutely nothing for the film. Also, the bullet-time shots of steel arrows being fired at people return for this flick, although once more, it feels more like a cheap imitation. Finally, Jonah Aldrich arms himself with the same Thompson Center Arms Contender single-shot pistol that Lance Henriksen used in the first Hard Target.

While we are talking about Lance Henriksen, I think the filmmakers failed to grasp what made the first film so great. In addition to some top-drawer action, the original benefitted from mostly-strong supporting cast. This went double for Lance Henriksen’s and Arnold Vosloo’s villains, who were not only intimidating, but had a professional relationship with each other that made them more compelling than had they been your ordinary Hollywood psychopath. Robert Knepper does a decent job as the head of the enterprise, but Temuera Morrison barely registers as his partner, Madden. There is not enough interplay between those two to really get a feel for their partnership.

Unlike the first Hard Target, this film’s primary focus is the hunt itself. I can see the filmmakers wanting to jettison any sort of a mystery or build-up, since we already know what to expect. This new focus puts the movie closer in spirit to Suriving the Game starring Ice-T and Rutger Hauer. And like that film, the hunters include an alpha male trying to “make a man” out of his son; a complete psychopath (with Doomsday’s Rhona Mitra filling in for Gary Busey); and a guy whose heart isn’t in the hunt who ultimately gets killed by the main villains themselves. The forest locales and scenes of the “vendors” supplying their clients with motorcycles and four-wheelers feels a lot more like the Ice-T film than it does John Woo’s explosive film, which kept much of the action in an urban setting.

Speaking of action, it is safe to say that we get a lot of it. The first act features a handful of one-on-one fights as we follow Bailor’s fighting career from professional to clandestine. Fans of Adkins’s turn as Boyka in the Undisputed sequels will no doubt like these parts. Once the hunt begins, there’s a fair amount of fighting, gunplay, running, explosions, and good ol’ fashioned gratuitous violene. Adkins is his usual dependable self, whether it’s performing jiu-jitsu ground fighting manoeuvers or his patented 270º spinning jump kicks. The man is a kicking machine and while this isn’t his best showcase, you still get enough Adkins action that you can appreciate the man’s skill.

What the film is lacking is a suitable opponent and climax. When Wes Bailor faces off with Rhona Mitra’s crazy rich girl character early on in the hunt, she comments on how daddy’s money gave her lots of time to refine her combat skills. But much like Russell Wong and Jet Li in Romeo Must Die, Mitra is no match for Adkins, her action chops notwithstanding. And even when Mitra faces off with Bailor’s female companion (Ann Truong), the latter takes her out with suprising ease. When I saw that, I thought to myself, “Well, at least they have the crazy matador (Adam Saunders) for Adkins to fight.” Nope. That guy is a final boss for Ann Truong and her brother, who goes down without a proper fight.

While the original Hard Target doesn’t have any of Van Damme’s all-time fight scenes, the finale was a smorgasbord of gunplay, explosions, stuntwork, and Van Damme’s famous jump kicks set in slow motion. It simply hit all the right action buttons. I realize that this film didn’t have the budget to do that, but it still goes out on a whimper instead of a bang. If you can’t do a sprawling action sequence, do a sprawling fight sequence, which probably costs a little less. The film hints at it: Jonah Aldrich calls in his “Clean-up Crew,” a group of fighters led by Chocolate’s Jeeja Yanin. “Alright,” I thought. “At least we’ll have a great final fight.” Nope. Jeeja throws a few decent kicks and Bailor dispatches everyone in about sixty seconds.