Hard Target

Hard Target, by Robert Tine

September, 1993  Berkley Books

I can’t recall if I saw Hard Target in the theater; I’m thinking I didn’t, and probably saw it later on VHS or laserdisc. I also have a hazy memory of seeing the fabled workprint at some point in the dim past…I seem to have vague memories of watching a blurry video copy with the timecode on the screen, the extra gratuitous violence, and lots of scenes that didn’t make it into the completed film. Well anyway, I’ve always ranked Hard Target as one of Van Damme’s best films, despite the unfortunate mullet he sports in it, and certainly the best movie director John Woo made in the US. 

Who knew there was a novelization? Once again I have Robert Mann to thank for sending me this book. Penned by ubiquitous tie-in novelist Robert Tine, the Hard Target novelization is notable for featuring some of the cut scenes that feature in the workprint. But one thing the novel lacks in a serious way is the graphic carnage Woo brought to the film. Tine’s action scenes are curiously bloodless, more outline-esque than anything and lacking much impact. In fact, “outline-esque” sums up the novelization; Tine, judging from this and his Eraser novelization, is not a tie-in novelist who brings a lot of “new stuff” to his novelizations. For the most part, Hard Target reads like a narrative summary of the film. The positive note though is that it does have some sequences in it that didn’t make it to the finished product. 

I get the impression that Tine wrote this before production began, or at least he was not privy to the production. The characters are not described like their film counterparts, in particular old man Douvee, who is described as “rail-thin” in this novelization…but was played by rotund Wilford Brimley in the film. And there’s none of the balletic heroic bloodshed of Woo’s action choreography; in fact, the action scenes are pretty boring here in the novel. What Tine’s novelization makes clear is that the story for Hard Target was pretty anemic, and it was only John Woo’s stylistic excess that made it memorable. With that missing, Hard Target the novel comes off like a tepid retread of The Most Dangerous Game. 

Now as for the “new” stuff, honestly it’s pretty minimal. And most of it is material that appeared in the workprint. Like a minor crony gets his ear chopped off by a pair of scissors, something which is graphically shown in the workprint. There’s also a part where main villain Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen) plays a piano. There’s also a part where hero Chance Boudreaux (Van Damme) gets it on (off page) with female protagonist Natasha “Nat” Binder (Yancy Butler). The ending also appears to be different, with Chance and Nat about to go off in a Happily Ever After. But then it’s been decades since I saw the actual film, so maybe that’s how it ended. There might be other subtle differences here in the novelization that would be more apparent if I were to actually rewatch the film, but I’d rather watch Miami Vice. 

So the novel follows the film, or perhaps that should be the screenplay, rather apishly. Wait, another difference – I got the impression, reading the book, that Chance Boudreaux could’ve been played by just about any action star. In other words, Chance’s martial skills aren’t much focused on, and he basically just does basic “action hero stuff” throughout, with none of Van Damme’s flash. This could be another indication that Tine was writing before production; I read somewhere the John Woo originally envisioned Kurt Russell for the lead role in Hard Target, and yes he certainly could have played the Chance Boudreaux of the novel. 

Another difference is that Boudreaux is more of a ragamuffin in the novel, practically destitute and living hand to mouth in New Orleans as he waits for the opportunity to continue working as a merchant seaman. But then the poor and the homeless are a central subplot of Hard Target, something made even more obvious here in the novel. Hey, sort of like that fourth season episode of Miami Vice, “Badge Of Dishonor!” Sorry, let me get back on track. Also, no mention is made of Boudreaux having an unfortunate mullet. He’s basically a cipher here, and late in the novel it’s explained he was a Marine and such, but there’s no real personality given him in the book. This makes it really hard to buy the ensuing relationship between him and Nat. 

The novel also follows the opening of the film, with Nat’s estranged father, a ‘Nam vet, being chased by Fouchon’s men. (Fun fact: The screenwriter, Chuck Pfarrer, played Binder in the film.) The setup is that Fouchon rents out his commandos to the mega-wealthy, who go along on a sort of big game hunt, with the prey of course being man. The hunted men are former soldiers who have come upon hard times, and they take the crazy job in exchange for money; if they can make it to a certain location, they will go free. However we know from the sequences in Fouchon’s perspective that he’ll never let one of his prey escape; this opening sequence proves it, as Fouchon’s latest client, Mr. Chang, fails to kill Binder…who does indeed make it to the safe location, and thus should go free. But Fouchon kills Binder anyway. 

All as in the film, but here we learn posthaste that the novel will not have the stylistic flair of the movie. Also the vibe is different; one does not get the impression here that Fouchon has a huge team of hunter-killers at his disposal. Also he himself takes place in the hunt, and he doesn’t use any special weapons or specific gun like the film. Mostly he just issues steely-cold orders to his men, particularly Pik Van Cleave, a South African who is in charge of the hunting dogs (Arnold Vosloo in the film). Checking imdb.com, Vosloo’s character is called “Van Cleaf,” and also there’s no credit for a “Mr. Chang,” so this could be more indication that Tine was writing before production. Mr. Chang also factors in the final action sequence of the novel, so the character might have just been written out of the film. 

The movie makes more sense out of how Chance and Nat team up – but again, I haven’t seen the movie in forever. Here in the novel it’s kind of hard to understand why they do. There are vague mentions that the New Orleans cops are threatening to go on strike (one of the reasons Fouchon has recently set up shop here), thus the homeless population does not get any attention. Nat’s dad, then, was a nonentity so far as the cops are concerned, so she desparately seeks someone to help her around the city. It’s just all very hard to buy – “My dad’s missing, I need some stranger to help me look for him!” But regardless she convinces Chance to help her by offering to pay the amount he needs to pay for the resinstation of his merchant seaman card. 

It's also really hard to buy that Chance sees more to the story; when it’s soon learned that Nat’s father is dead (his corpse found in a burned-out building), one would think Chance’s job has come to an end. I mean he was hired to help find the guy, and he’s been found. But Tine has it that Chance and Nat continue working together. And of course, Chance notices something the cops overlooked – that one of Binder’s two dog tags are missing – and he goes around looking for clues. This is how Chance stumbles upon Fouchon’s plot, in which “runner” candidates are sourced from a local business that’s run by a sleazy guy who hires bums to hand out XXX flyers. When Fouchon finds out about this, first he has Van Cleave take a pair of scissors to the sleazy business owner’s ear, then he tells Van Cleave to find Chance and kill him. 

From there on, Hard Target is essentially an endless action scene. Oh, I forgot to mention, but despite the recent murder of her dad, Nat still finds the time to get down and dirty with Chance. The scene plays out with the two kissing, and then Nat leaves…but then she comes back to Chance’s place and says she changed her mind. This bit is repeated in the end, only the other way around – Chance says he plans to go off on the latest merchant sailing and then comes back to Nat and says he changed his mind. But anyway the boinking is off-page; the chapter ends here. But soon after this Chance and Nat separate; when it’s soon clear that people are trying to kill Chance, he sends Nat off with his uncle, Douvee, whose job is to keep Nat safe. 

This leads to dual-pronged action scenes, with Chance taking on one portion of Fouchon’s forces and Nat and Douvee facing the other. Tine tries to work in some comedy with oldfashioned swampscum Douvee boasting about his moonshine and complaining about having to ride a horse. But it’s all pretty messy; for example, at one point Nat hurls a molotov cocktail at Mr. Chang, and Tine writes that Chang “vanishes” in a burst of flame. One would get the impression that Mr. Chang is no more. Yet he appears again, with no explanation, later in the book to hunt Chance and Nat along with two other clients Fouchon has quickly hired for the hunt to kill Chance. Also, the separation of Chance and Nat serves no purpose, as soon enough they (along with Douvee) are reunited and working together against Fouchon. 

The biggest problem is that Tine is not at all invested in his action scenes and brings nothing to them. It comes off like he’s lazily just lifted material directly from the screenplay: 

With the pizzazz gone, one is left with a curiously flat and uninvolving “action novel.” Chance’s motivation is also really hard to buy; he’s very much a cipher. I felt that the movie did a better job of investing him in the tale – and also in the film you really wanted to see Fouchon and Van Cleave and the others get blown away. Here I had absolutely no emotional investment in the story…it was all just too bland. Oh and one thing to note – the finale does feature Chance dropping a grenade down Fouchon’s pants, which I believe happened in the film. Here in the book Fouchon manages to get it out and tries to disarm it, to no avail. 

In closing, Robert Tine’s Hard Target did not come off as a fine novel on its own, and it did not make me want to see the film again. I’m not saying it was terrible, though. It was interesting at the very least just to picture someone other than Jean-Claude Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux (again, the character’s a lot more “Kurt Russell” here in the book), and I appreciated the stuff that didn’t make it into the film. Oh, and random note – yes, Chance punches a snake and then bites off its tail here in the book, too.

Eraser

Eraser, by Robert Tine

June, 1996  Signet Books

I was always under the impression that Eraser was an unofficial sequel to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s earlier movie Commando (1985). And this was an immediate reaction; I saw Eraser in the theater on its opening night, with the Arnold-obsessed friend I mentioned in my Total Recall review. This guy was so obsessed that, every July 30th (ie Schwarzenegger’s birthday), he’d call people up and tell them, “Happy Arnold Day.” I think Eraser came out around this time, or maybe a little before – all I remember is I’d just graduated from college and was spending the summer in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is where I saw the movie. 

But it seemed clear that Eraser, which is likely considered a lesser movie in Schwarzenegger’s canon now, was at least somewhat of a tribute to Commando. It had the same sort of “comedy meets action” vibe, with Schwarzenegger playing a stone-cold badass who, despite his stone-cold badassery, had a gift for goofy one-liners. Also, Schwarzenegger played a “John” in both films: John Matrix in Commando and John Krueger in Eraser. Both films featured a black lead actress: Rae Dawn Chong in Commando and Vanessa Williams in Eraser. Schwarzenegger jumped out of an airplane in both films: before takeoff in Commando and before landing in Eraser. There was also a total callout to Commando in Eraser, with Schwarzenegger at one point wearing a jacket with “Let’s party!” written on it, this being one of his lines at the climax of Commando. 

What really set my friend and I to theorizing was that the end credits didn’t bill Schwarzenegger as having played “John Krueger;” instead, he was credited merely as “Eraser.” This gave the impression that Krueger wasn’t even the guy’s real name. And most importantly, “Eraser’s” job was creating new identities for people. It didn’t require a huge leap in deduction to figure that John Matrix could’ve changed his own name to John Krueger. Of course, all this is pointless, as the two films are clearly unrelated, but it was fun to think of Eraser as the Commando sequel we never got. But then, many years later I managed to get a copy of the never-produced Commando II script, dated February 1989 and written by Steven E. de Souza with revisions by Frank Darabont, and in it John Matrix goes up against a nefarious defense contractor…so similar to the plot of Eraser that I wondered if this was yet another connection between the two films. 

I recall at the time that I thought Eraser was fine, if fairly generic; it was clear even then that there was a huge difference between Schwarzenegger’s 80s films and his ‘90s films. His star power was still sufficient enough to make Eraser a hit, and it might’ve been his last non-franchise hit, I’m not sure. It was certainly better than the movies he made over the next few years, but I only saw it that one time in the theater. Then about a decade ago I got it on Blu Ray, and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Still thought it was a bit generic, though, with none of the violence of those ‘80s movies and more of an attempt at being a “real” movie, with James Caan and James Coburn in supporting roles. Also, you knew for sure it was the ‘90s because suddenly Schwarzenegger was pecking away on a computer keyboard. And using a handgun – notice that in the ‘80s the action stars used machine guns, but they reverted to handguns in the ‘90s. Just kinder, gentler times overall. 

Well anyway, this tie-in novel courtesy prolific novelization author Robert Tine hews very closely to the film itself. And despite being 233 pages it’s a quick read; you could probably read it in the time it would take to watch the movie itself. It’s got some seriously big print, and looks very much like the average Gold Eagle paperback of the day. Tine also drops in the occasional weaponry detail, which gives it even more of a Gold Eagle vibe. There are no major differences from the film – this isn’t a Rambo III type novelization, that’s for sure – or at least none that jumped out at me. About the most I noticed was a bit more backstory for Krueger, who reveals that he got into witness protection years ago because a woman he knew was raped and he pushed her to testify, and she ended up getting killed because no one protected her. But then, this dialog might be in the film too, I can’t remember. 

Tine’s novel somewhat aids my “Commando sequel” theory: Krueger is referred to as “Eraser” in the narrative, same as Schwarzenegger was in the credits. He’s only called “Krueger” once or twice, and his WITSEC colleague Robert Deguerin (James Caan) refers to him as “John.” But then Deguerin himself is referred to as “Samaritan” in the novel. They are all US Marshals, part of an “elite Shadow Operation” by the name of WITSEC, and these are their code names. It lends the story more of a comic book vibe than the film actually had. This is somewhat present in the opening action scene, which sees Eraser, masked head to toe in black like a ninja, taking out several mobsters as they’re about to torture-kill an informant named Johnny C. This was another part my Arnold-obsessed friend and I got a kick out of, as Schwarzenegger first appears while hiding behind an opened refrigerator door. My “eccentric” friend liked to do the exact same thing; he was fond of “sneak attacking” people, usually appearing out of the shadows to throw a kick at your head or whatever. Hiding behind an opened fridge door was one of his favorites, and there his friggin’ hero was doing the very same thing on the big screen! 

This opening eventually paves the way for the main plot, which has Eraser taking on a defense contractor which is planning to sell off its high-tech experimental weaponry to the highest bidder. Ultimately the Russian mafia is involved, but this isn’t really elaborated on. Eraser’s main enemies are his fellow agents, rogue ones from WITSEC and the CIA. One of the problems with Eraser is that Samaritan is played by James Caan, and thus the producers give him a bit more personality and memorable lines. This movie’s over 25 years old and I’m sure the majority of you have seen it, so no spoiler alert but Samaritan turns out to be the bad guy. The thing is, because the producers gave him a personality he lacks the batshit craziness of previous villains in Schwarzenegger films – like the guy in Commando, or even Richter in Total Recall. Guys you spend the entire movie waiting to see get killed. 

And honestly, if you have seen the movie, you’re not going to get much new stuff out of Tine’s tie-in, or perhaps we should refer to it as a Tine-in? No, that would be stupid. But really, the book is almost a straight take on what’s seen in the film, and for the most part Tine doesn’t even add much inner stuff for the characters, to give perspective or depth. This actually could’ve helped the book in a major way. For example, the plot concerns Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), an executive at defense contractor Cyrex, who wants to turn in evidence on some illegal and traitorous actions involving newly-developed rail gun technology. While Tine displays some of Lee’s concerns and fears early in the novel, in later action scenes he skips all that and just tells us what she’s doing. Like the big action scene in the zoo; it’s all Lee aiming guns and firing, or even later in the book bashing some guy in the head and escaping, and it all just happens, with no internal turmoil from Lee, someone entirely new to this world of violence, as she prepares herself to attack someone. 

Otherwise the action follows almost identically to the film. The airplane sequence also plays out the same, with Eraser drugged by Samaritan and then managing to jump out of the plane after he wakes up. I recall the part where he parachuted into the auto junkard – asking the kids “Where is this?” and the kids replying “Earth – welcome!” – got a big laugh in the theater, probably the biggest laugh of the movie. But then, Schwarzenegger’s one-liners suffered too in the ‘90s; his “You’re luggage!” to a CGI-rendered alligator he shoots at the zoo was lame even then. Actually Caan is the one who gets the most comedic lines, his Samaritan almost having a grand old time of it as he goes bad. Also the violence has been toned down; Tine’s novelization might be more violent than the film, with occasional mentions of heads being blown off. I also appreciated his description of how the rail guns worked, in particular the “eerie glow” of the “X-ray scope” on the guns. 

Toward the climax Eraser and Lee infiltrate the Cyrex HQ, a scene which plays as much on comedy as action, featuring as it does Johnny C feigning a heart attack in what could almost be a skit from a comedy movie. From there we get into the action, with Eraser again blasting away with a sidearm as Samaritan and the CIA goons try to hunt him down. But it’s so far removed from the action spectacles of the ‘80s, with those damn computers once again central to the action as Lee hurriedly types away on a keyboard. I seem to recall the Commando II script also featured John Matrix infiltrating the high-tech HQ of a defense contractor (it’s been several years since I read it); Frank Darabont, who revised that unproduced script, also did some uncredited rewrites on Eraser, so this entire sequence could be yet another tangent in the “unofficial Commando sequel” theory. 

One area in which Tine’s novelization veers from the movie is the ending. I remember reading a magazine article years and years ago where Vanessa Williams stated that she and Schwarzenegger had originally kissed at the end of Eraser, but this “romantic” ending was changed because it “didn’t work.” Tine actually has that ending here in the novel. We see Eraser and Lee at an airport, deciding on where to go. He returns her St. George necklace, which he took from her earlier in the book as part of her “identity erasing.” The idea being that he is now her protector. They kiss and that’s that. I can’t even remember how the actual movie ended right now. Maybe I should get the Blu Ray out and watch it again. Really though, Tine’s novelization just reinforced the idea that Eraser is a bit generic, like one level above a direct-to-video release. Which makes it all the more sad that it was one of Schwarzenegger’s better ‘90s movies!