the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

Good movie but grossly overrated

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Like I always say, I do not write many reviews. First, I only write if the movie is extremely good and 2nd, if people are unnecessarily bashing a good movie or 3rd, it has a low rating. I decided to write this review because of 3rd reason. A different kind of movie from Van Damme, far away from his usual kind of action movies. You see him as an actor than the one kicking-ass. I saw it many years ago and have not forgotten the experience. It kinda reminds me of another movie called The Beast of War (with Kabir Bedi in ensemble cast). Both set in some desert and both unforgettable in a good way. This movie shows you the toll of war on one man and his comrades, a war with guns and knives, not of hi-tech weapons. You should see this damn well made B-movie. One of the most memorable movies I know. There are other very well made movies in usual action settings from Van Damme like "Wake of Death" and "Knock Off" and from Steven Seagal like "Urban Justice", "Pistol Whipped" and " Ruslan: Driven to Kill".

Let me be honest and say it from the beginning. I am a huge Van Damme fan. Now that the biased is declared lets get into the review. Legionnaire was the highest straight to DVD movie ever made. Yes, Van Damme was so huge back in the day's of 90's action films that this film's cost was over $20 million dollars and it didn't even get Cinema release. Which was a shame. The film is definitely not as bad as some of the action movies we see today. Van Damme plays Alain Lefevre, a boxer who is paid to take a dive. Alain is to proud to do that and win's the fight that costs gangsters a lot of money, he tries to flee France and go to America, But after being the fight Alain ends up being chased by police, and finds himself in the French Foreign Legion and deployed to Africa to crush an insurgency in a French colony.You can tell Van Damme co-wrote it: He gives himself a lot of acting time on screen as to try and break away from the typical films he usually does, and not much ass-kicking time, but then again you still have various action clichés popping up and the odd one-liner here and there.Van Damme's martial-arts skills are not showcased here as much as in his other movies. There are a few boxing scenes, and some fighting scene in the end, but really different from all of his other films fight choreography. This really does film like a whole different genre for Van Damme to tackle. 'Legionnaire' is surprisingly good in the end. Van Damme gets to do something different for a change, and I'll give him credit for it. It is more dramatic than most of his other movies, and I can say that the film was still enjoyable to watch and much more enjoyable to watch because of Van Damme's performance.

Legionnaire was an action drama which did not showcase Jean Claude Van Damme's trademark 360 kicks and instead tried to show that Van Damme can actually act. This movie had the potential to take off and be a decent movie, instead the end result just fell flat. It was hard to get interested with Legionnaire. This was one of a few movies that perhaps was a sign that this would be the beginning of Van Damme's career, which was also marred by drug and alcohol abuse as well as being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.Jean Claude Van Damme plays boxer Alain Lefevre who refuses to take a dive during a match and attempts to flee Marseilles, France for America. His plan to flee goes seriously awry and he ends up joining the French Foreign Legion to escape from his troubles. Alain finds that the only way to survive his time in the Foreign Legion is to make it out alive. And to make matters worse, hired thugs have been sent to join the Legion to seek revenge on Alain.Jean Claude Van Damme in his halcyon days was a thrill to watch. Bloodsport (1988), Kickboxer (1989), Double Impact (1991), Universal Soldier (1992), Hard Target (1993), and Timecop (1994) are several of the many movies that I enjoyed watching Van Damme in. The late 1990's and throughout the millennium have not been kind to Van Damme. With the exception of The Expendables 2 (2012), his career has been stuck in direct-to-DVD doldrums and his career does not show any signs of being resurrected anytime soon.On paper producer Edward R. Pressman, famous for movies such as Wall Street (1987) and The Crow (1994), and director Peter MacDonald, well known for Rambo III (1988), you would expect that this would be an action packed spectacle. Instead, this was just a boring fizzer with an uninteresting story and you are wondering when will Van Damme kick some butt.Unfortunately Legionnaire is a very unmemorable movie and amongst all the many dismal movies of the past 15 years, you find yourself reminiscing the glory days of Jean Claude Van Damme.1/10.

It seems to be the popular thing to do to jump on the bandwagon and badmouth Van Damme for being a bad actor or for making one bad movie after another. I have always claimed to be a fan, but mostly just because when I was a kid I watched movies like Kickboxer and Bloodsport and Death Warrant over and over. To be honest, I hadn't really seen many more of his movies for years, except for Hard Target, which I found less impressive than his early martial arts films.But recently I bought 16 Van Damme movies on two DVDs (for 20 yuan – about $2.75 - thanks to mainland China's total indifference to copyright laws), and as I watch them I have noticed something important. It seems that most of the reason that Van Damme is criticized is because of things like goofy camaraderie or cheesy heroic lines, things like that. But it seems noteworthy that in just about every movie he is in, he is fighting for justice or to be a good father or good husband or to protect his fellow man from criminals or to avenge a loved one's violent death. Van Damme represents good human values in a way that most other action stars don't. I feel like he deserves a lot more credit for that than he ever gets.Besides that, the guy can speak five languages. Did you know? WOW.In Legionnaire he plays a boxer who's paid to take a dive in the second round, but when he, ah, accidentally beats the tar out of his opponent, he suddenly finds himself being pursued by mobsters and police, which quickly dashes his and his girlfriend's plans of getting out of France and going to America. Soon he finds himself an unwilling member of the French Foreign Legion, which employs the psychotic idea of training soldiers to exist solely for the honor of dying in battle, and is run like a prison with racks of guns. They are sent to Africa to crush an insurgency, resulting in more of a war film than a martial arts film.But I have no problem with that. There is a notable appearance of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, a clearly talented actor who recently wasted his undeniable on screen charm on such backwards TV shows as Lost and Oz, and here is again asked to do something terrible – he takes on an American accent, complete with ridiculous lines like "The only thing that keeps a man livin', you gots ta have a dream…" But there is a friendship that forms between Alain Lefevre (Van Damme) and Adawale's character, Luther, that is pretty good, and allows for the most tense and moving scene in the film.Given that so much of the movie plays like a prison film, since the Legionnaires are generally forced members, some of the scenes are a little strange, such as the one where they argue about the best way to hand wash laundry. Then again, it seems like some of the lines between soldiers were put in for comic relief ("What's the matter, don't like girls?" "Of course not, I'm British!").Speaking of which, for how moving the friendship between Alain and Luther is, Alain has an undeniably cheesy friendship with the British guy, although it is also a very unstable but powerful relationship in many ways, and also allows for some good dramatic tension near the end of the film. Alain is also the good guy that sticks up for the underdogs who can't defend themselves against the more brutish soldiers very well, which doesn't seem to make him many friends. Also, soon after their first battle, he walks around shirtless showing off his chiseled body and making enemies effortlessly.The battle scenes, by the way, are also pretty good, much better than I would have expected from Van Damme, if only because war scenes are not what he usually does. But here they're impressive, although the end of the movie is a pretty significant disappointment. It builds up this remarkably in-depth story and then just stops, like they ran out of money. The leader of the enemy insurgency lets Alain live so he can tell his leader that this is what they can expect if they keep invading their country, and then Van Damme heads back into the sunset. It seems like what happens next should have been considered important, and it leaves me with the feeling that the movie ends just as the real climax was set up.But nonetheless, I remember I was working in a video store in Fresno when the movie was released ten years ago, and for some reason I never watched it, but I'm glad that I have. It has plenty of shortcomings, but it is definitely worth watching.