• Directed by John Woo
• Written by Chuck Pfarrer
• Starring
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme
  • Lance Henriksen
  • Yancy Butler
  • Arnold Vosloo

When legendary Hong Kong director John Woo first came stateside (in the initial wave of Hong Kong personnel hedging their bets against the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong from the British to China), people expected great things from him. Like, really really great things. Given that his “gun fu” movies had turned Hong Kong action cinema on its ear, his fans on this side of the Pacific were hoping that he would similarly reinvent the Hollywood action movie. These are the people who were vocally disappointed with Woo’s first American movie, Hard Target.

In retrospect… come on, get serious. Like monolithic Hollywood is going to let itself get reinvented by an interloper. Do you really think some incredible paradigm-shattering movie is going to be yet another adaptation of “The Most Dangerous Game,” and star Jean-Claude Van Damme? But once those transcendent, almost messiah-like expectations are put to rest, it’s still gratifying what this movie got right.

Like the vacant stare? Hope so.

And things start off well right off the bat, with a poor homeless vet (screenwriter Pfarrer) being bowhunted through the grungy night streets of New Orleans. His ostensible pursuer is a big-game hunter looking for the ultimate thrill, but the real danger is severe businessman Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) and his right-hand man Van Cleaf (Arnold Vosloo, more recently of Universal’s Mummy movies), the entrepeneurs who organize these hunting excursions and place their trackers and vehicles at the call of the hunter. Henriksen’s in rare form; his severe facial features consistently get him cast as hard-asses, but he rarely gets to play such cooly malignant characters as this. There seems to be some kind of statement, or at least intentional impression, that the natty and cultured Fouchon is overcivilized to the point that he’d dissociated from the “earthy” human values and only comes close to touching them through his involvement in these exercises. Whatever your interpretation, the single scene of Fouchon violently playing a breakneck piano piece with mechanical perfection and an impression of controlled rage is the kind of touch you don’t get in most action pieces.

I am soooo tired of homeless guys offering to clean off my windshield for me.

In fact, Fouchon is by far the most charismatic character here, as we’re soon introduced to our protagonists: Natalie Binder (Yancy Butler of TNT’s Witchblade series), daughter of the recently slaughtered vet, comes to the Big Easy wondering why letters from Daddy recently stopped. I warn you: after the first ten minutes, Nat is pretty much useless baggage for the movie; she never takes much of an active role in the proceedings, and certainly doesn’t up the action quotient. She’s a character without traits, strengths, or even interesting birthmarks. On the other hand, it turns out that Butler is perfectly cast in the role; Nat is a perpetually out-of-her depth waif, stunned and confused by the events around her, and Yancy expresses that perfectly, given that her acting repetoire apparently consists of two expressions: Blank incomprehension, and… all right, one expression.

After finding that Pops had recently lost his job and his room in a boarding house, she starts checking the shelters and soup missions, stupidly flashing her pocketful of traveling cash among down-and-outers. In the real world, she would quickly have been the victim of their mugging; but in this world, a tarnished knight appears: Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme), ex-Marine turned seaman who just happened to be in the neighorhood, and who always enjoys exercising his high kicks for a good cause. Van Damme’s rarely been photographed so well; Woo lingers lingers on him with the camera in a fashion usually only seen for the larger-than-life heroics of Westerns (and the dusty, rundown gentility of old New Orleans in daylight is the perfect backdrop for that image). And as evidenced by the hand-to-hand (-to-foot) combat here, Woo’s not lost his abilities to shoot well-choreographed unarmed action.

“Trust me. No. Really.”

Of course, then Van Damme has to open his mouth and remind us how poor his acting ability is. Butler may be a net zero on screen; Van Damme, whenever he speaks, actually sucks all of the color and charisma out of those around him like some sort of puncture in the fabric of the universe. Good thing that his dialogue is kept to a minimum.

It’s no more than a chance meeting, and wouldn’t develop into more than that, but when Nat then heads to the police station to file a missing persons report, the only detective on duty (Kasi Lemmons) during an officer’s strike informs her (quite rightly) that for a person to be missing, he has to have someplace to be missing from. Her only alternative is to canvass the missions and such herself, in the company of someone who knows the city well. Like, maybe an out-of-work kickboxing ex-Marine.

“Ah, the things we actors do to get into role. (Gulp.) Aaaaalmost ready, Mr. Woo…”

Finding Dad’s abandoned shopping cart of worldly goods, they find a stack of phonesex fliers that many of the homeless pass out for spare change, and boy, what a lucky first clue — because seedy porn purveyor Randal Poe (Eliot Keener) just happens to be Fauchon’s recruiter, finding homeless veterans with combat experience and no family to be contestants in Fauchon’s little contest. Obviously, Poe screwed up on the “no family” part with Binder, much to the consternation of Fauchon and Van Cleaf, as Chance, with Natalie in tow, tracks them down.

Part of what makes this movie memorable is the setting; New Orleans comes across like a once-classy town gone hopelessly shabby, trying to shake off a decades-long hangover; and the soundtrack, heavy on the blues and zydeco themes, plays this up flawlessly. Unfortunately, the final act moves the action from the peeling grime of the Quarter to the hinterlands of Louisiana, Chance’s old stomping ground, to get the assistance of his moonshining Uncle Douvee (Wilford Brimley!). It’s that old trick of getting the hunters out of their comfort zone, but since the countryside isn’t exciting enough, we naturally find an abandoned refinery out in the middle of nowhere for the showdown — filled not only with sheet metal, hanging chains and catwalks, but also used as a graveyard for old Mardi Gras floats. Sure, Mardi Gras is a big part of New Orleans culture, but since the New Orleans we’ve already been watching for well over an hour isn’t at all festive or colorful, it’s more of a break in imagery than a connection. In fact, the oversized and garish papier-mache constructions are more like the cliffhanger of an old Batman episode. (And I never knew that old floats were stuffed with leftover fireworks so that they’d explode and spark so beautifully whenever shot.)

Remind me not to pack one of those overcoats for NOWFF.

There is, however, plenty of übermacho gun fu in the finale, plenty of stuff blows up, and Natalie naturally ends up being the designated hostage (yet further flashbacks to Batman and the Boy Hostage). The movie may never transcend its identity as a Hollywood-made American action movie, but it’s a distinctively Woo-flavored American action movie, and that still elevates it above most of the herd.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 32, plus 1 rattlesnake
• breasts: 0 (though there’s a Van Damme/Butler love scene reputed to be in the unreleased director’s rough cut)
• explosions: 39
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Tom Lupo (“Jerome”) played a security guard extra in three episodes of the classic series