Legionnaire

Typical military recruit movie with beautiful desert landscapes. Maybe with a different script or a more emotional character we'd get more drama from the supposedly love story. The idea that the gangster would send 2 underlings to join the French Foreign Legion to kill JCVD is silly, when he could have just paid a guy like he ended up doing. Fav scene: final siege with the fort being blown up all around was a spectacle, though at times the dusty gunfight got boring.

Van-Damme plugs himself into an old-timey action epic – simplistic screenplay bogs itself down with self-important exposition when all it really wants to do is blow shit up real good; however it's unfortunate that the action scenes tend to be repetitive and incoherent, robbing the film of the fire it might have had. Almost dragged to redemption by ever-reliable crazy man Berkoff, who proves here as elsewhere that he could give Kinski a run for his money in the intensity department!

When Jean-Claude Van Damme fails to take a dive in a boxing match, he has to join the French Foreign Legion in order to escape the thugs he double-crossed. Co-starring Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Steven Berkoff, Nicholas Farrell and Ana Sotrenovic.

Very, very boring and tedious. That means it's a bad action movie.

While not among the most entertaining JCVD movies in the action department, this still is very watchable cause on other aspect it's among the best of his oeuvre. It's has a good co-cast, which makes JC also step up his game. On top of that it has a good tight, well paced plot, relatively well-rounded characters and an epic final battle with hundred of Moroccan horsemen attacking the forth resulting in surprisingly bleak ending.

JCVD treading a lot of the same ground he has before.

bad movie

I guess people didn't like that it wasn't an action movie, but a war movie. And, I don't know... I kind of like it for it.

This isn't a typical JCVD movie with only a couple of fight scenes but the larger battle sequences are nicely done. The main role requires a little more range than JCVD can manage and the other characters are a little two dimensional and the script a little unimaginative but even so I found it quite watchable.