When the Black Veteran was wounded asking people for help and people just dismissed him as another bum. After seeing that people didn't view him as a man, he accepted his fate and was killed.
I know this movie wasn't the best in the world plot wise but that scene was pretty powerful.
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I thought he had an even more powerful scene earlier, when he's going through the selection process, and he's asked about next of kin and family members, and he is made to repeat that he has no one and there's no one left in his family, etc, and you can see he's fighting back sadness with a fake smile. Tragic character, and more emotion than you'd expect in a Van Damme action film from the 90's.
sharethis is the reason why i posted. felling bad for elija.
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Wholeheartedly agree, Elijah was cool.
The black people in this movie suffer the worst. There's the black detective who has no-one to celebrate her birthday with and later gets killed.
The actress, Kasi Lemmons, had appeared in a 1988 episode of The Equalizer (Day of the Covenant) where one of the characters refers to a police station as a hard target: "I think that a police station is considered a hard target in wartime."
I felt sympathy for both characters.
Elijah death was heartbreaking, the scene when he said he didn't have any family is even sadder. Det. Mitchell portrayed as a lonely person in work and life, I am truly curious about her background story. It's shame we didn't get any hint.
It's maybe the Van Damme movie with the most interesting characters, I can't think of one boring or annoying character.
I suspect it was John Woo's touch. He brought human heart to the action. I think Hard Target was Woo's best movie he made in the USA.
shareYou're right. In the October 1993 issue (No. 47) of the French Impact magazine, John Woo said: "I find the script for Hard Target a little too linear, a little too simple, probably because it has passed through so many hands and each of the participants has revised it in their own way. However, I managed to flesh it out a little. In particular by describing the social reality of New Orleans - the homeless, the poverty, the unemployment. These details are what I appreciate most in Hard Target. There is not only action and gunfights in my films; the social aspects count at least as much."
shareIt's unexpected but pretty effective.
shareAs a kid I was pretty shocked that not a single person on that crowded street seemed even remotely inclined to help him while a gang of mercenaries looms nearby and readies their weapons. 30 years later as an adult, and having lived in Los Angeles for 10 of those, I can now say I fully understand why you wouldn't want to listen to some desperate homeless man running up and screaming at you for help.
But presented in the context of the film, it is a pretty tragic and effective scene with a touch of social commentary. It's also crazy that a man could get riddled with dozens of bullets in downtown New Orleans and it doesn't really seem to attract much attention or police response at all, at least from what we see.
In the December 1992 issue (No. 42) of a French magazine called Impact, screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer said: "I'm from Biloxi, Mississippi - a small town of rednecks. In the past, I came to New Orleans quite often, but it was while researching for the film that I really discovered it. I followed police officers on patrol. With them, I learned a lot about the incredible savagery of the city, about this violence even more pervasive than that which rages in Los Angeles, about the galloping corruption. Very good for Hard Target all that. This allows us to show a bribed medical examiner who announces that a bullet in the head is a natural cause of death."
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