Hard Target - Chaos in Slow Motion

Becoming burnt out and not writing anything for at least a month is a yearly tradition for me for some reason. I don’t know what causes it. I still watch movies, and I even take notes for future articles, but something keeps me from actually writing the articles. I guess sometimes I just like to watch movies just to watch movies instead of watching them to write articles that maybe a dozen people will read. Anyway, I’m back, so here’s an article about Hard Target.

Slo-Mo

Slow motion is a fairly standard part of a good Van Damme movie. A roundhouse kick just looks better when things are slowed down so the audience can appreciate it. John Woo takes it to another level at times in Hard Target, especially during Van Damme’s first fight scene. Slo-mo might seem cheesy to film snobs, but when used correctly, as it is here, it can heighten an action movie. 

Too often, especially in martial arts films, fight scenes are edited into a hectic blur with only sound effects letting you know when someone is punched or kicked. To be fair, a fight is a chaotic situation, and quick editing can convey that feeling. But when I watch Van Damme kick someone in the face, I don’t want to feel like I’m part of the fight. I want to see his foot connect with someone’s face. John Woo gives the audience that.

I’ve always felt that slo-mo does more justice for the performers and for the action itself in a film. Why go to the trouble of casting able performers and choreographing a fight when the end product is indecipherable? It’s like a guitarist learning an incredibly difficult solo that sounds like shit; yeah, it’s impressive that they can perform it, but who wants to hear it?

Slo-mo isn’t a cure-all for an action film, though. Van Damme was obviously influenced by this film when he directed The Quest. That movie would be fifteen minutes shorter if all the slo-mo scenes ran at regular speed. He has slo-mo of characters looking at each other. (For the record, I love The Quest, but even I can’t defend all of the slo-mo in that movie.) And you do lose the impact of a good kick to the face when you slow it down. It’s a difficult style to perfect, but if anyone comes close, it’s John Woo. 

Chaos

John Woo is also a master of chaos, and Hard Target is definitely chaotic. The action in the finale is just absurd. The trademark Woo birds flying around, explosions, Mardi Gras parade floats, and about a thousand bullets: it’s fucking crazy. And it’s great. The last fifteen minutes of Hard Target is a perfect example of what I miss about ‘90s films. And it’s not just the action that’s nonsensical. 

By the end of the film, I can’t come up with a good reason for any of it to still be happening. Lance Henriksen’s hunting people for sport business is done because there’s too much heat. Usually, he just packs up and moves on to a new location. But for whatever reason, he wants Van Damme dead. I get that Van Damme messed things up for him by investigating and whatnot, but if he’s truly a businessman, he would cut his losses. And it’s not like Van Damme did something to him personally. I would get it if Van Damme had killed Arnold Vosloo earlier in the film, then it would be a kind of revenge thing. But that’s not the case. Vosloo survives until the end, and he even argues with Henriksen, asking him to drop the hunt and move on. But Henrksen is obsessed. He wants to fuck shit up. And why? Because the movie needs it.

Sure, it makes no sense for Henriksen to be this devoted to killing Van Damme, but it’s an action movie, and there needs to be fucking chaos for the last showdown. And you know what? That’s fine with me. Watching the final insanity, I would find myself wondering why it was happening, but before I could get too far with the thought, more awesome shit would happen to distract me from trying to figure out any logic of the film. 

I’ll take entertaining chaos over boring logic every time in an action film. The best Van Damme movies embraced this idea, and Hard Target is a perfect example of that. Let me put it to you this way: this movie is so gloriously crazy that it made me forget until just now that Van Damme rocks a greasy mullet the entire film and at one point bites the rattler off a rattlesnake. What else can I say?

Van Damme Name Check

Obviously foreign actors playing characters with typical American names always annoys me (think Schwarzenegger playing “Adam Gibson” in The Sixth Day [by the way, I looked that up; I do not know Schwarzenegger’s character name from The Sixth Day off the top of my head]). Because of that, I like to devote a little space to Van Damme’s character name in each film. Usually, the filmmakers do a good job giving him a half-assed realistic name matching his accent and heritage. For Hard Target, it’s Chance Beaudreaux. Fucking perfection. 

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

The writer of the film plays the guy being hunted and killed at the beginning. Is this a metaphor for what happens to a writer's script during the development and production of a film?

Van Damme slides some change to the waitress to pay for his gumbo and coffee (fucking gross, by the way); it totals sixty cents. He's a regular, but you can't run a business at those prices!

The film is tonally all over the place at the beginning, going from thriller (dude being hunted) to melodrama (daughter looking for her missing father) to western (Van Damme in a duster saving a damsel in distress as stereotypical western music plays). I actually dig the western vibe, despite the film taking place in New Orleans in the early '90s. Also keeping with the western theme, Vosloo's character is named Van Cleaf, an obvious homage to Lee Van Cleef.

Van Damme's reason for sticking around (being in arrears on his union dues) is the exact same reason why Llewyn Davis can't leave in Inside Llewyn Davis. Obviously, the Coens were inspired by this film.

The music seems to change genres depending on which character is being focused on.

I'm pretty sure Woo's direction to Arnold Vosloo for this film was, "Always look like you just got done stomping a puppy to death, and you enjoyed it."

"Eastern Europe. We can work there for years." It's like a prediction for Van Damme's DTV career.

The hunt doesn't seem all that thrilling or challenging with the dudes on the dirt bikes taking care of most of the work.

New Orleans is presented as such a shithole that a shootout can happen in a famous cemetery and someone can be executed in the French Quarter in front of dozens of witnesses, and the cops won't show up until the next morning. 

This film makes New Orleans come across like such a ghost town at times...it's odd. I know it's not Mardi Gras all the time, but it's still a major city.

Van Damme breaking a dude's neck by kicking him in the head as he drives by on a motorcycle is about as badass as it gets.

After watching the ridiculous shit Van Damme does on a motorcycle in this movie, the nonsense John Woo came up with for Mission: Impossible 2 makes perfect sense.

Okay, that shit with the rattlesnake is just too fucking stupid.

Completely forgot that this movie featured Wilford Brimley on horseback shouting gibberish while holding up a bow and riding away from an explosion.

Henriksen treats all the hunters at the end like complete dog shit, and these dudes are all paying him $750,000 for it. Why the fuck are they willing to take so much shit from him? 

What's worse than taking a Van Damme roundhouse kick to the face? Getting shot a dozen times THEN taking a kick to the face.

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Halloween Month: "The Thing"

*As always, I write these articles under the assumption that you’ve seen the movie, so...SPOILERS.

After rewatching Slither, which is partly an homage to The Thing, I decided to watch that film next. I’ve always been a little afraid to write about The Thing because it’s so good I feel like I wouldn’t do it any kind of justice. I still feel that way, but I don’t care anymore. I’m not trying to write anything definitive about any of the movies I revisit for this site. I’m just writing what occurs to me as I rewatch them. Still, I find it easier to write about movies like Dracula 2000 than The Thing. I don’t hold Dracula 2000 in very high regard. The Thing, however, I consider one of my favorite movies of all time (perhaps the favorite, but more on that later). John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors, so it’s high time I write about one of his masterpieces.

By the way, I know: "Halloween Month" and I'm not writing about Halloween. I get it, but I don't own that Carpenter movie. I like it, but I prefer his sci-fi work over his straight up horror films.

The Thing is a moody masterpiece

The amazing, gross, shocking, still impressive to this day, practical special effects of The Thing usually take center stage when the movie is brought up. I completely agree with that, but there’s not much I can add to that subject. Instead, I wanted to focus on what keeps bringing me back to this movie: the mood.

Mood, or atmosphere, in film is very important to me. I want the world of the film to feel real. I don’t think I’m alone in that since people tend to prefer practical sets and effects in movies these days. If you some CG creation, it takes you out of it. Since movies are meant for escapism, we don’t want to be reminded that they’re movies while we’re watching. I cannot think of a movie that keeps you in its world better than The Thing. The special effects play a big part in that. The defibrillator sequence comes to mind. I’ve seen that scene (and the movie in general) at least a dozen times, and I still get drawn in every time I see it. When the Norris-thing’s head separates itself and sprouts legs and crawls off, I watch in awe. I don’t think, “How did they do that?” I just think, “What the fuck is that thing?” I feel like I’m in that room with the characters.

Effects alone don’t accomplish that feeling, though. The setting is a big part of it for me. For whatever reason, I’m a sucker for sci-fi films that take place in secluded settings. Antarctica, a space ship, an island, whatever. As long as it’s a place apart from the rest of society I’m in. It’s not because I hate society or anything (I’m not a big fan, but I take part in it), it’s that secluded settings allow for a no rules scenario. Anything can happen. There’s no calling 911 or anything like that.

The separation from the rest of the world is key for this film. Getting help from the outside world is never seriously considered. Sure, they keep trying to get someone on the radio, but it’s never presented as a real possibility. And when the power gets cut off, the situation becomes even more dire. But instead of worrying about surviving, the characters pretty quickly decide they need to stop the Thing, even though they know they will die no matter what. That bleak scenario always appeals to me: in the face of certain death, the characters put their own survival to the side to accomplish their goal.

Simply being separate from humanity isn’t enough on its own to create a truly memorable setting, though. The bleakness of Antarctica is a character in itself in The Thing. Much like movies that take place in deep space, like Alien, the setting says something about the characters. What were their lives like that led them to choose this area for a job? The Thing is fairly light in traditional character development. We know very little about these men, and we only get slight hints at their relationships to one another. But I still don’t consider them underwritten characters, partly because of the setting. To take a job at a research station in Antarctica says something about all of them, especially the non-scientific characters. Who takes a job as a pilot, a mechanic, a radio operator, a doctor, a cook(!) in Antarctica? I don’t need a backstory in that scenario; their very presence there says plenty about them.

The final piece to establishing mood in The Thing is the score. The Thing is unique in that the score was not done by Carpenter himself, though if you didn’t see the credits you might think he was the composer. Ennio Morricone did the score, but it is very Carpenter-like. More importantly, it’s eerily perfect for the film without drawing attention to itself. Morricone’s score (which he re-used a bit and used unused portions of for Tarantino’s version of The Thing: The Hateful Eight) is the icing (no pun intended) on the cake of this film. It completes the overall feel of the film that brings me back to it multiple times a year.

It’s time to rethink my favorite movie of all time.

As a movie guy, a common question I get is, “What’s your favorite movie of all time?” As any movie buff will tell you, it’s very hard to narrow it down to a single film. Hell, I don’t think I could make a top 100 list without feeling like I’m forgetting something I love. Rather than say something annoying like that, I decided years ago that I would go with Apocalypse Now. I do love that film, and I watch it at least once a year. But I’ve never felt entirely comfortable giving it the number one spot. As I started to watch The Thing again, it just hit me: I love everything about this movie. I never get tired of revisiting the world of The Thing. With Apocalypse Now, I need to be in a certain mood to watch it. I think I could watch The Thing no matter what mood I’m in. So I think I’m going to start telling people that The Thing is my favorite movie of all time. But it’s more than just the mood of the film that led me to this.

As I stated above, I’m not trying to write a definitive article about this movie, but I feel like I need to at least nerd out about why I love it so much if I’m going to call it my favorite movie of all time. I’ll start with Carpenter. John Carpenter is one of my favorite directors of all time. His films are unpretentious, and they are just genuinely entertaining. With a Carpenter film, you know you’re going to get a unique world, and something dark and interesting is probably going to happen. He’s had his misfires, but when a Carpenter film is really working (The Thing, Halloween, The Fog, They Live, Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13), it’s simply awesome.

The Thing is also helped by its great cast. Kurt Russell is particularly great here, mainly because he’s not a typical hero. Sure, he takes charge in this film, but he’s not like Snake Plissken; he’s not a professional badass or anything, which actually makes him more interesting. And Keith David is always great. Wilford Brimley nearly steals the film, especially when you consider his freak out scene. There’s not a weak link in the cast.

The story is endlessly interesting because of the classic gimmick of trust. Who is the Thing? Or, who isn’t the Thing? Stories about paranoia in which the characters can’t trust each other are great for rewatching. The Thing can be studied intensely, or you can just casually enjoy it. I prefer to casually enjoy it, but if I wanted to I could really dissect it and try to figure out who was the Thing at what point and why did the Thing do this or that. I’d rather just enjoy the overall film, but it’s nice to have the option to give a deep dive into the story, too.

It all comes down to the look and sound of the film, though. This movie looks so fucking good, even by today’s standards. Actually, it looks better than most of today’s movies, and that amazes me. I get absorbed into this movie every time, and it’s because of the look and sound of it. It’s rare that I watch a movie at home and truly pay attention to it. But The Thing demands your attention because it’s so good. How can you look away from this movie, even at its most gruesome moments? Yeah, this is my favorite movie of all time.

Pretty sure The Thing is the inspiration for Dana Gould’s “Grady’s Oats” sketches for The Ben Stiller Show

Okay, there’s a lot in the topic header. Let’s start with the “Grady’s Oats” sketches. I’m a big fan of Ben Stiller’s short-lived sketch show from the early ‘90s. One of the funnier recurring sketches in one episode involved comedian Dana Gould (in heavy makeup and prosthetics) portraying Wilford Brimley as the unhinged spokesman for Grady’s Oats in a sendup of Brimley’s actual sponsorship of Quaker Oats. Over the course of three ads, Gould’s Brimley reveals dark family secrets, yells at oats, and eventually brandishes a gun and shoots at neighborhood children, likely hitting at least one.

It’s that final meltdown that reminded me of The Thing. The gun Gould uses is similar to the gun Brimley uses in The Thing when he loses his shit. I love that Brimley freak out scene, and it might be the scene that puts this film over the top to become my favorite of all time. But is that scene truly the inspiration for the sketches? I don’t see how it couldn’t be.

I tweeted at Dana Gould and asked him, but he didn’t respond, either because my question was so damn random or because he was too busy tweeting his outrage with our present political situation or both. I’ll need to check out the show again on DVD and see if there is a behind the scenes thing about it, but I don’t recall anyone mentioning The Thing in regards to the sketch when I watched it before. But look at the evidence.

Do I regret buying this?

Take a guess. Fuck no. That said, I do wish I had held out for the collector’s edition that came out a while back. I’ll probably go ahead and get it, which means I will have bought this movie four times. My only regret is that I’m a sucker for special editions.

Random Thoughts

Russell has never been cooler

They are way too quick putting out the dog thing fire. I would've given it at least another minute. So the fire spreads. So what? Did you see what was happening in that kennel? Let ‘em burn.

Man, I love Wilford Brimley’s freak out scene. “I'll keel YOU!”

Brimley just hanging out, eating Dinty Moore beef stew...next to a noose he made.