646f9e108c An Ex-French Soldier begins participating in underground street fights in order to make money for his brother's family. Lyon Gaultier is a deserter in the Foreign Legion arriving in the USA entirely hard up. He finds his brother between life and death and his sister-in-law without the money needed to heal her husband and to maintain her child. To earn the money needed, Gaultier decides to take part in some very dangerous clandestine fights. Lionheart is clealry one of the best movies Van Damme made in his early days. The film had good fight scenes and a nice plot. Harrison Page as Van Damme's boy provides a lot of good one-liners and Van Damme kicks a lot of ass. I give it *** out of ****. AWOL also known as Lionheart shows us Van Damme just on the cusp of hitting stardom. By this time he had a loyal following for what were low budget martial arts films that got a loyal following on VHS and did well in the fledgling satellite movie channels market.<br/><br/>Lyon Gaultier (Van Damme) escapes his post in Djibouti with the French Foreign Legion when his brother is set on fire by drug dealers in LA. His brother's wife rebuffs him and and two agents are pursuing him to drag him back to the Foreign Legion.<br/><br/>Once in the USA he stumbles into the underground fight scene which he quickly becomes successful at and soon enlists a street hustler as a manager, Joshua (Harrison Page) who gives him the nickname Lionheart.<br/><br/>His success attracts the attention of a fight promoter Cynthia (Deborah Rennard) who gets Lyon for several no holds barred street fights. However it seems the real action is on the side bets and although he is her champion she is not averse to betting against him.<br/><br/>Lyon in the meantime is trying to get money together for his sister in law and his niece for which Joshua is used to inform them that its proceeds from an insurance policy.<br/><br/>The film has several good action sequences allowing Van Damme to display some of his signature moves. You have fight scenes set in an underground car park and more memorably in a half empty swimming pool. The combat scenes are well choreographed with even some humour thrown in in the final segment.<br/><br/>The storyline is rather so-so and the script is just about passable. If in doubt the writers put some cursing in. Van Damme's acting would get better in time but here its still weak. You can see how even a few years later Dolph Lundgren would out-act him in Universal Soldier.<br/><br/>Still there is enough fight scenes allowing Van Damme to excel at what he does best. Rennard best known for years as JR Ewing's loyal secretary Sly in Dallas provides sassiness as the scheming fight promoter. In the US the film was released in a version that is, compared with the European versions, cut differently because some plot scenes were cut out, presumably to tighten the film. On the other hand there're also some very short frames missing in the International Cut.
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