Hard Target is a 1993 American action film directed by Chinese director John Woo. The film stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux, an out-of-work Cajun merchant seaman who saves a young woman, Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler), from a gang of thugs in New Orleans. Chance learns that Binder is searching for her missing father (Chuck Pfarrer), and agrees to aid Binder in her search. Boudreaux and Binder soon learn that Binder's father has died at the hands of wealthy sportsman Emil Fouchon who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
The of the movie starts with the universal film company being shown, which was the distributor of the film. There is heavy breathing in the background while the titles for the movie are being shown in in a blue colour and bold font which signifies the serious/effective genre of the movie.The opening shot fades in with a long shot of a street view, it is night time and heavy thunder and raining is being portrayed on the screen, which shows us, the audience that something bad or sinister is about to occur. The shot is a POV (point of view) shot of an individual who we do not know about.
A piano seems to be playing in the background, this is non-diegetic since the actual instrument is not in the scene. the point of view pans to a horse carriage, it almost tells that the person is maybe weak and is carrying a heavy burden of some sort. This is shown in the next shot where he pleads "help,help" and knocks on the doors of the street trying to get someone's attention and possibly escape from the situation that he is in. Music in the back is once again played, this time being Jazz, this represents the environment where there are a lot of bars and clubs. The entire sequence up till now is shot in a clearly fitted frame in which the audience can see the entire street view.
there is heavy breathing in the shot, quite similar to our sequence, this signifies that the individual is probably running away from something and is quite tired. Theres a quick close-up of a arrow being shot at someone, in the next edit the victim is shown who was the one leading the POV sequence, he is quickly shown as being injured by the arrow; the next edit is a long shot of the 'hunters', who are not shown clearly, there seems to be a shadow effect on them which signifies that they are the bad guys since black is traditionally viewed as the evil/bad side.
Another arrow is shot in the next edit but this one transforms into the films title 'Hard Target',signifies the emphasise on the movie's name, there is obviously a 'target' being hunted/
The victim gets tracked by the camera as he is running away from the people who are hunting him, this automatically sets the idea in the audience' mind of who the victim is and who the bad guys are. A cut to the protagonists is shown and in a situation like this, they seem to be quite calm and relaxed, almost as if they are in complete control and they already know the result of what is about to happen. The victim climbs over a fence in an attempt to escape but is knocked back down by a biker, the shot is in slow motion which signifies that his escape is far from anywhere near,the next edit is a long shot of a biker being behind him and in front of him when he falls from the fence, the focus here is that he seems to be surrounded and that there is no way out for the victim.
Here is when hope for the individual in the eyes of the audience seems to decrease because as the rest of the crew approaches in cars, bikes and on foot the odds against the target seem to increase dramatically but two people of the entire pack of hunters seem to be quite relaxed, the main protagonist/bad guy is in a classic long shot, driving into the scene in his car and the close-up of his face is shown as extremely calm and relaxed, its as if he does not feel the need to get involved at the time because he probably already knows the result of what is about to happen. "If he makes it to the river he's won, we can't allow that to happen Mr Lupaci", the first dialogue of the movie tells so much, the audience now know that it is a deadly game of cat and mouse that is going to be the main plot of the film. The victim runs away onto a field which is standing in between him and the river, amongst the killers. However the victim is shot by the arrow by one of the bad guys which approaches to his death, another arrow is shot again but this time the victim ducks and rolls over in order to get out of the line of fire, the audience at this time wonders if there is still hope for the target. While he is running away there is a medium shot of two bad guys firing at the person, a classic and much used shot in action/crime films, however the victim fights back by throwing a petrol canister at the line of fire and blows up, the hope in our eyes for him increases as well as the empathy for him. One of the leaders fires a grenade at the hut that he is hiding next to which heavily injures him, instantly the narrative is changed as he is heavily injured and we as viewers know strongly now that it is nearly over in terms of his life. As one last attempt for freedom is taken by the target and we go back to a POV shot in which he sees a boat which is like the ribbon at the end of a race, but he can't get to it as one last shot by the hunter with the arrow goes through his back and chest. There is a fade-out effect used which signifies that he is now dead.
In terms of mis-en-scene the time of day is night, when everyone is asleep and no-one is there to assist or help anyone in a similar situation as him, also everyone is wearing a black attire, which again goes well with the environment because of the type of scene that is being portrayed on screen. Most of the props utilised are weapons such as the arrow, the petrol canister and guns, this gets us as an audience wondering of how the movie is going to turn out next, will there be a continuum of this type of killing or is there going to be a twist, will there be an antagonist turning the plot? or is the film going to go into flashback of how this all started.
The time and place as I mentioned before is signified completely by the other aspects of the mis-en-scene such as the costumes and the location which goes from a street to a massive field and onto the docks where the victim is murdered.
There is not may dialogues used, just the one punch-line which the main bad guy says, mostly because in edits and shots such as this opening sequence there is not a need to have a lot of conversations between characters or any other types of dialogues, the characters and the environment amongst the action on-screen signify most of the story in a short 5 minutes which is around the time for the opening sequence to take place.
The film used here is similar to ours because the plot introduced is quite similar to ours in terms of the POV shot and having a victim and a bad guy, there is not any introduction to the antagonist in this scene and also in our opening sequence we did not have the 'good guy', simply because the plot was clear and there did not seem to be any need of the hero being displayed on screen.
Posted by Ramish
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