I found the dvd in the $5 bin at Wal-Mart last night. So since it was the only good title in it that I could find,I figured what the hell since the price was so damn good.

While it is 16.9 and looks and sounds great.

The extreme censorship the violence in the film suffered is distracting. So since Universal is into releasing unrated cuts of newer films. Do you think they would ever go back and restore this film?

I know Woo has not really had any box office hits in the U.S. besides the Mission Impossible sequel and Face Off. Yet you would think the studio would attempt cashing in on his name then at the very least? So far nothing.

So do we have to wait until Woo scores another hit at the box office,or will Universal just not bother? I would really love to see a restored print of this film.

I tried to get my hands on the Japanese uncut laser of this a while back, but was never able to. I'd love to see it.

Probably not.

I have the Japanese Laserdisc edition, it's not uncut.

supposedly, the Australian R4 edition is the unrated cut of the film.

I hope you knew that before shelling out big bucks (?) for it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107076/alternateversions

mentions that r4 australian version has more violence than the r1. so does a full directors cut even exist?

I remember a grey market video making the rounds about 10 years ago. I don't recall what the source of the video was supposed to be, though.

I wonder if they would license it out? I mean since the film was not a hit(I wonder why? ),so most likely they won't bother to revisit it. Then why not sell the rights to Anchorbay or someone? I mean that is what they did with Army of Darkness and licensed out Videodrome to Criterion,since the films are not 'important' to them(ie-they were not financial hits).

If I had the money,I would love to purchase it myself and release the best dvd ever possible for the film. So we can finally see what it was really supposed to be like.

Sadly it's obvious since the trouble Woo faced with the censors with this film,that he really toned down the violence for his later films to the point of being pretty much bloodless.

I have been holding out on this praying for a new release of it. May look into the Australian version.

yeah right... no...

I do though have a work print version of the uncut version on VHS, and its cool as shit. (and I mean that in a positive way).

I like this flick, would love to see the unrated version someday. But I doubt we will see an R1 release.

and Universal (US) are complete hypocrites and release unrated video versions of crap films (i.e, the American Pie Trilogy) but don't give the time or day to release an unrated version of 'Hard Target'

raunchy NC-17 comedy good, NC-17 action violence bad.

They're doing Dawn of the Dead unrated. It's possible I guess.

What the IMDB calls the "director's cut" is what is more commonly referred to on the net as the workprint. You can find it sold on tape (or from a tape source) around the net. Terrible picture quality. Aside from the bit with Henriksen playing piano intercut with the safari, it's not that much better (if at all) than the Euro "uncut" release. In some ways worse (no "Oops" grenade gag) and no one has ever confirmed if Woo's final version would have looked like this anyway.

So, essentially, there are 2 legit versions available: the US version and the Euro version. The latter has a few more minutes of violence but, if you're a hardcore action junkie, you will be able to see that those minutes make a big difference to the feel of the action. It's more grandiose and thus more Woo-like.

The problem is not all Euro DVDs have this cut. I can confirm that the British DVD is uncut and can be found for cheap on amazon uk or ebay. For people with NTSC-only dvd players, I would suggest getting the Japanese or Korean DVDs, both of which contain the Euro cut. I think the K-disc should be inexpensive.

What the workprint has, and people who are fans of Woo really want to see, is glorious amounts of violence, I mean no one takes less than 10 bullets in this movie, one guy takes 30 plus shots in one scene, overkill yes but very fun to see. And there are more than just the piano scene, there is also a cool scene when Vosloo is tracking Van DAmme, visualizing where they went as the image changes back and forth between what Vosloo sees and then what Van DAmme does.

Glad I didn't get it then!

I haven't seen the workprint in a long time, but are you sure that's not on the Euro cut? The excessive bullet hits are in this as well. Like when Van Damme shoots the big guy an insane number of times, then says "sorripbadashirt" (sorry 'bout the shirt). In the US cut, it's just a few shots, but in the Euro cut he shoots more bullets than his guns could ever carry.

Maybe they're waiting cash in on the sure-fire hits Van Damme has in the pipeline.