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A Major Disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A simplistic but effective early film from Van Damme, his fourth starring role after BLOODSPORT, CYBORG, and KICKBOXER. While some of the scenes and music appear to have been ripped off from ROCKY, this is still engaging viewing, with interesting acting and some great fight scenes to break up the rather soppy melodrama of the plot.Van Damme is definitely in his prime in this film, and it shows as he kicks, punches and elbows his way through a series of increasingly sadistic baddies in the ring. While his accent may be thick and his words not always in the right order, Van Damme still manages to inject some charm and charisma in the scenes he shares with his brother's family. Harrison Page is also surprisingly effective in a role as a down at heel, crippled fight veteran, and the viewer really warms to him by the end of the film. The female villain is nicely villainous, while Brian Thompson puts in another loathsome performance and gets a well-deserved kick to the face at the end of the film.The fights themselves are fun and outlandish, with plenty of martial arts moves and agile stunts. Beginning underneath a bridge, they move to a car park, a deserted warehouse, a squash court, and even a half-filled swimming pool. The enemies themselves are hilarious parodies, including an animalistic Scotsman who jabs his finger into Van Damme's eyes.However it's the final fight which really delivers the groceries, as it were. Van Damme, who has a broken rib, is forced to take on Attila, a maniac who feels no pain and toys with his opponents before breaking them in half. He's also virtually indestructible. We witness Van Damme being beaten to a pulp (Page tells him "he's gonna kill your ass, man, he's gonna kill your ass!") over and over again, until the audience begin to clap, the music builds and he literally kicks the living daylights out of Attila at the end, as everyone cheers and claps. This final bit is really great and worth waiting for, just like the final fight in KICKBOXER. Thus A.W.O.L. is something of a crowd-pleaser. I'm not ashamed to say that it's the only Van Damme that makes me cry, right at the end, and I'm no sentimentalist; something about Page's character in particular is completely moving.

Foreign Legionnaire Lyon Gaultier (Jean-Claude Van Damme) in Djibouti receives news of his dying brother. His heartless commander punishes him and he battles his way out of the base. He's a deserter hunted by the French government. He's a stowaway on a ship to America. He is surprised to find himself in NY. Joshua introduces him to underground fighting to pay for the trip to his brother's family in LA. By the time he reaches LA, his brother is already dead. His sister-in-law and her daughter are left with large medical bills. Cynthia runs the fights and he returns to the fights.The story is pretty clunky. The writing is at a high school level. The dialog is pretty bad. The acting is pretty bad, too. Van Damme may actually be one of the better actors in this thing. Ashley Johnson gets her debut movie role and she's probably the best actor in the whole movie. This needs to kill it in the fights but they don't stand out. There is a fun one with a Scot in a kilt but it's not really enough. The fights are mostly edited poorly and lacks excitement or fun. The final fight could be good but it's put together weakly.

In this one the Muscles from Brussels stars as Leon, a foreign legion deserter who gets mixed up with no holds barred underground fighting at first to make a phone call then to give his sister-in-law some much needed money after her husband, his brother is murdered.If one thinks too hard about the pol of the film, it seems utterly ridiculous. But for an action flick it fits the bill quite nicely. Van Damme kicks a lot of butt and doesn't care. The film lulls a bit after he gets to LA, but picks back up before long. All in all a decent watch, but rather dumb, an enjoyable kind of dumb though.My grade: C+

"Lionheart" is one of those rare movies that are so clichéd you can know it by heart without even having seen it. Nobody watches Jean-Claude Van Damme movies for their deep characters and inventive plots, but "Lionheart" is literally just "Bloodsport" with a less cool title. Van Damme joining an obscure fighting circuit, befriending a wacky sidekick, being chased down by his government, having to beat a grotesquely evil fighter that killed all his previous opponents, deja-vu anyone? "Kickboxer" was pretty similar too but at least those makers had the decency/insanity to have the characters fight with broken glass, this movie just totally phones it in. Van Damme also has to do quite a lot of drama scenes in this one, and let's just say I get why he's not on Broadway. Doesn't this movie have anything going for it then? Well, moving the action to LA was a pretty good idea, and the ending fight is pretty exciting too (mainly due to the cheesy audience reactions). That's all I've got though, sadly. Actually seeing "Bloodsport" again would be a much safer bet.