10 Things You Didn’t Know About Hard Target 2
Hard Target 2 is one of the most unexpected sequels in action movie history. Released 23 years after the Jean-Claude Van Damme original, Hard Target 2 gave Scott Adkins one of his greatest on screen villains (in the form of Robert Knepper’s Jonah Aldrich) and allowed Adkins’ Wes Baylor to play “the most dangerous game”.
One game I always like to play is how much can I learn about a movie from watching the Blu-ray special features. I recently sat down and watched Hard Target 2 with an informative and unique Director’s Commentary with Roel Reiné… it was informative due to the information download Roel provided, but what made it unique is that during the commentary he actually called up some key behind the scenes folks and the two main stars of the film, Scott Adkins and Robert Knepper, and got some of their input as well.
Now I will take some of the things I learned while watching and present to you, 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Hard Target 2…
1. Director Roel Reiné was a big fan of John Woo and one of the main reasons he agreed to direct Hard Target 2 (Woo directed the 1993 original starring Jean-Claude Van Damme) was due to his John Woo fandom. There are several homages to Woo found throughout the film starting from the opening scene that was a modern take on the opening scene from the original and the inclusion of some signature John Woo doves.
2. The film was shot entirely in Thailand in just 20 days. The budget was 4.5 million dollars.
3. Even when the screenplay was in the developmental stages, Scott Adkins was who Roel Reiné had in mind to play Wes “The Jailor” Baylor in the film.
4. Scott Adkins said Hard Target 2 was one of the hardest shoots he has ever been on due to the rapid pace that Roel Reiné works and the amount of scenes shot on any given day.
5. The early scenes that show our hero, Wes Baylor, in mixed martial arts action in “Las Vegas” were all filmed in one day in a hall in Thailand. These scenes were actually shot on the last day of shooting.
6. The office where we see the first meeting of Jonah Aldrich (Robert Knepper) and Wes Baylor was actually the empty top floor of the Bangkok hotel where Roel Reiné was staying at during the shoot.
7. The fight on top of the train between Tha (Ann Truong) and Sofia (Rhona Mitra) originally had a different ending. Roel Reiné loved the visual of Sofia falling between the train cars so much, he improvised and thanks to some clever editing and some CGI blood that became Sofia’s demise.
8. Roel Reiné hates Second Units and never uses them in any of his films.
9. To give the sense that Robert Knepper’s Jonah Aldrich character and Lance Henriksen’s Emil Fouchon from the original were related, Roel Reiné wanted Aldrich to have a one bullet pistol like Fouchon had in Hard Target. Unfortunately they could not find a gun like that anywhere in Thailand, so the prop master had to build one.
10. The original ending of the film was set to take place on a rooftop in Bangkok’s Chinatown but due to various production issues that was not feasible so the ending was changed to the bridge scene. Roel Reiné still plans on shooting on that rooftop in Chinatown for a future film.
