Danger Hulk

I was driving along a winding one-lane dirt road the other day when I noticed a flicker of movement in my rear view mirror, indicating the presence of someone approaching me closely from behind. I gave a quick glance and when I saw who was tailing me, the faintest trace of a smile began to curl up on one corner of my mouth. Before I did anything rash, I ran through my mental checklist to be sure: More spandex than any man should ever wear under any circumstance? Check. Two black voids where his eyes should be, devoid of any compassion for anyone other than himself? Check. A shit ton of weird logos and brand names covering the aforementioned spandex bodysuit? Check. Well fuck me sideways, I thought to myself in an inexplicable southern drawl, looks like we’ve got ourselves a cyclist. My hatred for these two wheelin’ mobile roadblocks is well-documented, so when I realized that the tables had turned and now I was the one blocking one of their paths, it occurred to me that this was one of the rare moments when the stars align and the opportunity to right a lifetime’s worth of wrongs, even if just for a few fleeting moments, is at hand. 

Slowing my pace to a crawl, I glanced back once more to see a look of agitation cross his face. He began to swerve back and forth, as though sending me a signal that he was trying to pass. I laughed dryly to myself and gently depressed the brake pedal further. As his slaloms became more feverish, I half expected him to start foaming at the mouth, flabbergasted by the fact that anyone would have the audacity to bumble along like a fucking sloth on a road meant to be swiftly traversed by speed merchants like himself. Well guess what Lance Armstrong, after years of you and your Schwinn-riding brethren using the roads like your own personal playground, weaving from lane to lane like schoolgirls frolicking through a fucking meadow and leaving it up to those of us in actual cars to clear the way for you, it looks like you’re just going to have to wait this one out. You made your bed and shit in it, don’t expect me to change the sheets for you before you lay in it.

After roughly a half mile or so, I approached a stop sign and he was regrettably able to make a left turn. I remained at a full stop and eyed him as he rode off into the distance, probably to go organize a fucking group of 40 his cronies for a ride through the center of town in the middle of all the main streets. That was a problem for a different day though. On this day, for a half mile or so, I had won, and drinking the wine of victory numbs the pain of any past defeats. Until next time, you son of a bitch.

I think I’m being pretty reasonable when I say that any movie featuring both Jean Claude Van Damme sporting a glorious shoulder-length mullet and Wilford Brimley riding a horse while shooting people with a bow is probably worth a look. I was drawn to the 1993 action masterpiece Hard Target when I found myself one morning poring over Van Damme’s entire filmography, a move that was spurred by an interest in some of his other classics, titles like DEATH WARRANT, MAXIMUM RISK, DOUBLE IMPACT, and SUDDEN DEATH. In the business of kicking ass, Van Damme, aka The Muscles From Brussels (a nickname I have been fond/envious of for many years), is a living legend and a master of his craft. Furthermore, I can identify with him personally for his considerable talent on the dance floor, a place that I too often call home.

Hard Target takes place in the rough streets of New Orleans, where a group of villains are running a lucrative operation offering wealthy repressed businessmen the opportunity to hunt and kill homeless people. An intriguing premise, especially when you take into account the fact that the villains look like this:

These are truly nefarious men. However, when the daughter of one of their quarries comes around asking questions regarding the whereabouts of her father, things start to heat up. The only man who can help her get to the bottom of the situation is a lone drifter, a ragin’ Cajun who goes by the name of Chance Boudreaux. This is Van Damme in all of his mid-nineties glory, a steely eyed freedom fighter who eats nails and shits gunpowder. Welcome to the Bayou, ladies, the line starts here.

In case you can’t already tell, Chance is not fucking around. He becomes personally involved with Natasha, the dead man’s daughter, and the atmosphere throughout the remainder of the film is dominated by a sexual tension so thick and palpable you could slice through it with a butter knife. It is excellent on so many levels. Their search for Natasha’s father’s killer leads them to Pik and Fouchon, two professional murderers who are woefully unaware of the shitstorm Chance is about to bring raining down upon their heads. When they are found out, they set their sights on Chance and Natasha, but little do they know that the hunters are about to become the motherfucking hunted.

A quick sidebar: One thing that deserves to be mentioned about Hard Target is the vast array of wildly impractical weaponry that is used. Fouchon’s main weapon is a pistol that can only shoot one round at a time, whose shell casing then has to be manually removed after each shot and then reloaded again by hand. If he’s lucky, he can probably get off five rounds per minute. I’m no expert, but that sounds fucking retarded. However, the guys in the prop department redeem themselves with this beauty:

That’s right, he’s got a fucking telescope on top of his gun. A normal sized scope would not suffice in this case, because after all you never know when you might need a weapon with the long range capability to really reach out and touch somebody… In space.

Back to the film though. As Pik and Fouchon pursue Chance and Natasha, they are lead into the deep Louisiana Bayou where the hero of Diabeetus himself makes his debut. Wilford Brimley plays Uncle Douvee, an overall-wearing moonshiner who speaks incomprehensible French and is an adept marksman with a bow and arrow. Like his nephew Chance, Uncle Douvee is well-versed in the art of stomping faces. 

Looks like his blood sugar is doing just fine to me. The film comes to a roaring crescendo when both Chance and Uncle Douvee lead their pursuers into an abandoned warehouse and proceed to conduct a brilliant symphony of death and mayhem. To cap it all off, Chance drops a hair-raising one-liner: “Hunting season is over,” before dropping a grenade into Fouchon’s pants and blowing him up from the balls out. A fitting end for a truly evil man.

When the dust settles, Chance, Natasha, and Douvee embrace in a heap, their emotions drained just as much as the magazines in their weapons. It was a wild ride, complete with Chance executing perfect front flips through at least five flaming infernos, men standing on top of speeding motorcycles while firing automatic weapons, and a body count higher than Mount Everest. My type of film. If you enjoy pulse pounding action, great hair styles, and anything involving Wildford Brimley, check out Hard Target.

4.5/5

Searching through the Netflix Instant Queue is like escaping from Shawshank; you have to crawl through 500 yards of shit before you find what you’re looking for. However, once you successfully navigate around the low budget 1970’s science fiction section, scroll right past the Lesbian docudramas, and carefully work your way around the vast archive of film choices that feature 50 Cent in a starring/directing role, you’re bound to find a hidden gem. One such diamond in the rough that I was fortunate to stumble upon one fateful booze-soaked night is the 1998 Straight-to-DVD action masterpiece “Point Blank,” starring none other than my main man Mickey Rourke. The poster for the movie is composed of 25% Rourke’s face, 25% fiery explosion, and 50% ethnically diverse group of men with large firearms. Needless to say, I’m fucking down.

 The film opens up with a prison transport bus rumbling along the highway to the tune of a sultry blues anthem, the first taste in a long line of top notch musical selections that the film offers. More on that later though. The premise is essentially that a group of prison inmates are being transported through Texas, and along their way they hire some goons to help them break out, a freeway shootout occurs, and within the first couple of minutes we are introduced to this guy. 

At this point I’m unsure if it’s an action movie or a terrifying low budget Serbian porn film that is about to get wilder than what I’m prepared for. Alas, I soldier on.

After the prisoners escape their transport bus, the action shifts to the idyllic setting of a Texas ranch as an epic 80’s power ballad sets the mood like an ancient bard strumming his lyre, preparing to weave the greatest tale of bravery and courage ever told. My heart rate is increasing slowly. We are introduced to Mickey Rourke’s character Rudy, a former mercenary who is built like the proverbial brick shithouse and wears a hat that says “SIERRA LEONE,” a nod to the third world shitholes that he used to call home. Inspiring. When Rudy’s father, a hardened old man outfitted in the Giorgio Armani of Canadian business suits, informs him that his brother Joe was on the bus full of prisoners and they are now holed up in a strip mall in Fort Worth, Rudy steps into action. The power ballad from before is replaced with a grinding 80’s guitar riff as Rudy steps into a vintage muscle car clad in a leather jacket and slicked back hair. This scene only tells us what we already know: This motherfucker’s ready to throw down.

Once Rudy descends on the strip mall where his brother Joe and the rest of his cronies have taken hostages, shit really starts getting out of hand. Local law enforcement is pitifully outgunned by the embedded hostage-takers, and of course Rudy is the only one capable of infiltrating and subsequently neutralizing them. I don’t want to divulge too much because I know anyone who reads this is going to want to go out and watch the movie right away, but I will say this: Danny Trejo plays a prominent role as a psychopath and is as buck wild as I’ve ever seen him, and Rudy is an ice cold ass kicker. After a smorgasbord of great scenes including Trejo snorting a brick of coke while a hostage strips for him, Rudy shooting gas powered knives while rolling across the ground, and an array of acrobatic kicks/martial arts moves that may or may not be gravitationally possible, we arrive at the piece de resistance, and possibly the high point in Rourke’s acting career. The iconic culminating scene comes about an hour in, in which Trejo is but a few feet from Rudy and is trying to light him up with a shotgun, but cannot connect because Rudy is doing backflips down the length of the entire hallway. This is excellent fucking cinema.

After almost an hour and a half of Rudy kicking so much ass that even my fists are sore, we are reminded of the unfortunate truth that all good things must come to an end. Rudy and his brother share a heartfelt moment and reconcile their differences, and the drama is resolved. Things get a little sappy towards the end, because like many B movies, Point Blank tries to penetrate deep into the viewer’s psyche with emotional scenes, half-assed character development, and other such bullshit that is poorly executed and woefully ineffective. I came here to watch ass get kicked, nothing more and certainly nothing less. Despite the emotional hiccups at the end and the glaring lack of one-liners, all in all Point Blank delivers.  «««««