Target — Target(Blu Ray)
Target is a mid-80s globetrotting thriller/adventure, featuring Gene Hackman & Matt Dillon as estranged father and son, who have to team up when Dona, the pair's wife/ mother, is kidnapped while on holiday in Paris. The twist is that the Hackman character isn’t who he seems, a typical middle-aged guy working in Texas; instead, he’s a Ex CIA who knows how to handle himself. Here from Australia’s Imprint is a recent Blu-ray release of the film- it takes in a new scan of the film, a new commentary track, and a few archive extras.
Target is a USA production from the year 1985. It was directed by Philadelphia-born Arthur Penn. Between the late 50’s and mid 90’s, he had thirteen features to his name. These moved between 1800’s period drama The Miracle Worker (1962) regarding the teaching of a blind, deaf, and mute girl. Western epic adventure featuring Dustin Hoffman Little Big Man (1970), and moody-to-gruesome psychological thriller Dead Of Winter (1987).
The just shy of two-hour film kicks off in Corpus Christi Texas, where Walter Ward( Hackman) is leaving his lumber yard job to track down his early 20’s son Chris(Dillon)- who hasn’t been home for a few nights. He tracks him down working on a stock car, and it's clear things are relatively frosty between the two. We find out that Walter’s wife/Chris's mother, the rather glamorous Donna(Gayle Hunnicutt) is going off on a solo trip to Paris, so the pair load up a car with her luggage and wish her a good journey.
The pair go for an awkward father-son fishing trip, then later that evening, when Walter’s in bed reading a novel. He gets a call to let him know that Donna has gone missing, so the pair jump on a plane, heading to Europe.
When setting down in Paris, it becomes clear that Walter is far from your standard balding mid-aged man. As in the airport, effortlessly, he throws off & disables two men who try to attack him.
As the film unfolds, we find out Walter was a CIA agent, and he starts meeting up with ex-friends from the service, like constant woolly scuff-wearing Taber(Josef Sommer), blond pixie-haired Lise(Viktoriya Fyodorova), who had a thing with Walter in the past, and a few others.
The pair's search for Donna takes them from Paris to Berlin, through to Hamburg. Along the way, the father and son relationship develops- as we get street-based gun play, cars on pedestrian bridges, jumping onto barges, more downstreet car chases, etc. Moving towards a bomb set finale.
Our two leads work well together- with Hackman and Dillon making a fairly believable enough father and son, with a few quite emotionally fraught moments. The rest of the cast is fine, and we get a few rewarding enough twists, with more folk turning out not to be what they seem.
The near two-hour runtime really could have been tightened up a little bit, as we do get moments of lag- where the plot is seemingly treading water. Though on the whole, Target is a watchable enough thriller/adventure, with some well-realised dramatic interaction between our two leads.
The Blu-ray features an HD print of the film- this looks fine enough, with a good colour palette, and an even tone balance throughout. The mix of dialogue and score is perfect, and all in all, it’s a decent scan of the picture.
The only new extra here is a commentary track from film critic Adrian Martin- this is well done, with both worthy observations and facts, and as you’d want from a good track, it certainly made me appreciate the film more. He begins by talking about how he saw the film in the cinema in Australia a year after its US release. And how initially the film felt very much made for TV, with its use of font, middle-of-the-road score, and its general tone- this, of course, this was all an act of misdirection. He talks about how director Arthur Penn is very interested in character psychology, and it’s different level, this very much coming out in re-watches of the film. He discusses the use of airports and train stations in the film. He touches on similar US directors who started off making TV content. Later on, he moves on to discuss the themes in the director's other work. The use of telephones in this and other spy films of the time, and much more, it’s a well worth a play track.
On the archive side, we get a selection of TV show interviews from the original release of the film. With actor Gene Hackman( 6.46), director Arthur Penn(6.06), and producers Richard D. Zanuck & David Brown(5.44). Each of these gives a decent insight, though the female interviewer's overbearing praise of the film felt rather contrived/cringe-inducing.
Target is an engaging enough thriller/adventure, with some well-realised dramatic interaction between the two leads. The scan on this new Imprint looks good, and the commentary is well worth a play, as are the archive interviews