Stars: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Berkoff, Nicholas Farrell, Ana Sofrenovic

Director: Peter MacDonald

Summary: A boxer wins a boxing match and becomes involved in murder. Innocent but pursued by the law he runs away and becomes a French Legionnaire.

Van Damme is a playboy living in Paris in the 1920's. He falls in love with the mistress of a mob boss, and when the boss finds out, joins the French Foreign Legion to hide out. Years later, after honing his fighting skills, he returns to battle the boss and reclaim his true love.

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Exiled to a video-only release when its distributor balked after the flop of Jean-Claude Van Damme's previous film Knock Off, this lavish adventure deserved a chance at theatrical success. Action icon Van Damme recasts himself as a tragic romantic hero in this entertaining old-fashioned adventure with a modern sensibility. "The Muscles from Brussels" is no Brando, but he acquits himself nicely as a cocky boxer who double-crosses a Marseilles mobster and joins the French Foreign Legion when his half-baked plan backfires with tragic consequences. Surrounded by a better than usual cast (including Steven Berkoff as a Teutonic drill sergeant, Jim Carter as the ruthless ganglord, and Nicholas Farrell as a gentleman soldier with a taste for gambling and a dark past), Van Damme's dour performance sometimes gets lost in the colourful characters around him. But that's okay--there's adventure enough to go around and he's willing to share it. The Marseilles scenes evoke a quaint movie past with their smoky bars and shadowy streets, but the film is reborn as an ambitious, stoic platoon drama in the sands of French Morocco. Legionnairealludes to classic films from Beau Gesteto Casablancato Lawrence of Arabia, but ultimately marches its own macho course, revelling in testosterone-driven heroics and bonding-under-fire while acknowledging the irony of its colonial mission ("We're the intruders", realises one soldier). It's a calculated risk for Van Damme (who also co-wrote and co-produced), but if Legionnairenever quite grasps the epic scope it's reaching for, it remains one of his best films, an handsome, exciting and surprisingly grim desert adventure. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.78 Wide Screen, 16:9 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1998
Release Date:	April 4, 2005
Runtime:	95 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C 823 404 0
Keywords:	Action, General, Wide, Screen, Adventure, Legionnaire
Genre:	Action/Adventure