Emanuel Levy of Variety stated the film was "a compromised work", owing to the generic script, "disjointed storytelling" and "uneven performances", but still praised Woo's action set pieces[13]
Richard Harrington of The Washington Post panned Van Damme's acting and criticised how much worse the film was in comparison to Woo's Hong Kong oeuvre, calling it "a disappointing affair that can probably be traced to seven producers and Hollywood's traditional inability to accommodate auteurs."[14]
Harrington remarked that despite Woo's pedigree, it seemed the director had "run into a Hollywood system that wants to like him but refuses to trust him."
While Rolling Stone's Peter Travers shared similar criticisms to Levy and Harrington, he heavily enjoyed Woo's action set pieces, stating, "Hard Target proves that John Woo is the hottest name in action anywhere. Woo doesn’t just direct action—he abstracts it, poeticizes it, explodes its boundaries and breaks it into dazzling new forms."[15]
However, a review by the South China Morning Post dismissed the visuals as "a sad mish-mash of Sam Peckinpah-style slow-motion blood-letting [...], Sergio Leone-style moody macho posturing, and a music-video gloss."[16]
