As the villians, Lance Henriksen and Arnold Vosloo go through the typical bad guy motions. Vosloo is the more memorable of the pair, though Henriksen does deserve credit for shooting a sequence in which he rages at his men with his topcoat ablaze.

Both actors make it clear that their characters are upper-crust crooks. Though ruthless and determined, they have a foppish quality and a refinement surprising for someone in their line of work. In one nice mise-en-scene bit Henriksen plays a Beethoven sonata in the drawing room of his estate while another homeless man is recruited for the next hunt. Henriksen's crony questions the victim about his finances and relatives. Each answer is intercut with shots of Henricksen and his opulent estate.

The script deserves credit for realizing the class conflicts in such a plot. Seducing the homeless into the game, the criminals use the lure of a cash prize for surviving. The dilemma of the victims is not ignored. Their uncertainty and hesitancy is won over by the chance of getting off the streets. The predations of the rich take many forms: an uncaring society ignores the downtrodden and then consumes them for sport.

Pfarrer also has the good sense to leave out any romantic complications. Yancy Butler plays Natasha Binder, a young woman whose search for her father leads to the discovery of the hunting game. Van Damme and Butler exchange some hugs and lots of slow motion looks but nothing more. An affair between the characters would be preposterous and it rightfully left alone.

"Hard Target" is worth seeing if only for the promise it shows for a new kind of action movie. Some of the worst cliches are discarded and some expert stylish touches are included. As a result the pacing is uneven and definitely unpredictable.

But the sense of something missing is overwhelming. "Hard Target" is overly lyrical and fluid because the true violence has been removed. With those sequences back in, the film would likely hit the critical mass it attempts to reach.

There's a lot more to come from John Woo, but this is not the ideal preview one might have hoped for.