Now I won't go as far as saying that it is the ultimate in survival-action (I think DELIVERANCE still ranks at number 1),but damn this movie rocks! I personally think it kicks more ass than RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD. As a matter of fact, wouldn't it be fun to have John Rambo an Jack Mason test their survival skills and see who wins? I haven't seen HARD TARGET yet (I'm not much of a Van Damme fan even though I'm from Belgium),but it can't get much better than this, no?

I'll spare you the plot, everybody seems to know it anyway.

I remember when going into this movie the first fifteen minutes (regardless the intercut scenes of a man being killed in the woods) I was thinking: "What's this? Another lame getho-drama with Ice-T playing a homeless bum? You gotta be kiddin' me!" Then Rutger Hauer comes in, playing it cool, doing the proposal. Interesting. Five minutes later the seven man are in the cabin in the woods eating porc. Amusing. Another five minutes later the hunt begins, ergo, the fun and violence start!

Dear people, when you watch this (type of) movie, please forget about minor unrealistic details like "Why does a city-boy like Jack Mason take the job as a hunting-guide in the first place?" (Heck, I'll even give you an answer: The man's got nothing to lose!) or "This type of shotgun is not able to cut down a tree that size" (I even asked myself that question for a second. Maybe it's got altered bullets. Who knows what these crazy man-hunting psycho's cooked up for the hunt?). Anyway, my point is: you don't ask yourself these kind of questions for this type of movie.

The fast-paced action and the violent killings are all above average and the hunt itself is competently shot, but what makes this movie even more pleasant to watch, are the actors and their fine performances. Ice-t is fun to watch, delivering his lines in that well-known nigga-slang of his. And the torment the poor man goes through makes you really want him to win the game. Then there's Rutger Hauer. I tell you: He's the man! He injects his role with such a cold-hearted sadistic pleasure which I haven't seen him do since THE HITCHER. Excellent! (On a personal note: If they can make Arnold Schwarzenegger a governor, then Rutger Hauer should be made president. The man played a philosophizing replica in BLADE RUNNER and a peace-bringing cyborg in OMEGA DOOM, for Christ's sake, so eat it, Arnie). And what about Gary Busey playing the tough talking' Doc. When he told the story about the dog when he was a boy, I mean, you just got to love 'em: 100% Gary Busey doing his thing. All the other actors did a good job too (I sure had some fun watching John C. McGinley as the asthma-puffin' over-determined hunting rich-boy on the verge of a nervous breakdown).

By giving the hunters background stories and meaningful lines to say, the scriptwriters made the characters interesting and real. Something you don't expect from an action-flick.

My favorite death-scene: Charles S. Dutton gets blown to pieces. Hauer kneels down by his dying remains and puts his hands on Charles' head, saying something along the lines of "It's time to go to sleep now...". Harsh, man, harsh!

To wrap it all up, we have a good musical score by Stewart Copeland and a solid & clever ending. So, if you're a fan of any of the actors mentioned above, this film is a must see! If you're not a fan of the actors mentioned above, then why did you read this in the first place?

Ice-T is a homeless person in Seattle. He has some street smarts and is used to roughing it. He is selected by a group of hunters to be their prey in a remote location. The group is lead by Rutger Hauer and has a Gary Busey crazy character in it. Formula film. You know how it ends. Decent for what it was.

Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity.

Gruesome and brutal. Action saga of a homeless man(Ice-T) being tricked by a group of Seattle businessmen into being a human target in their game of surviving the wilderness. Clever finale. Cast includes:Rutger Hauer, Charles Dutton, Gary Busey, F. Murray Abraham and John C. McGinley.