I found 'Legionnaire' for $10 on a rack labelled "Movies that should never have been made!". I had never seen 'Legionnaire', but on the same rack was the Arnie classic 'Conan the Barbarian'. I decided that whoever was running the store obviously didn't know what they were talking about - I'm sure Arnie will forgive them - and so I picked up 'Legionnaire'. If I had known it had a lot more of Jean-Claude Van Damme acting rather than Van Damme beating the **** out of bad guys, I probably would have avoided it. Good thing I gave it a go, as it was actually pretty good.

Van Damme plays Alain Lefevre, a boxer paid to take a dive by a mobster. Alain and his girl-friend have other ideas, and plan to flee France and go to America. After giving his opponent a good butt-kicking, and enraging the mobsters, 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.

Funnily enough, it is pretty much 'Lionheart' reversed. Other than that, 'Legionnaire' feels more like a war movie than a Van Damme movie. Then again, you can tell Van Damme co-wrote it: He gives himself a lot of acting time, and not much arse-kicking time, but then you 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 maybe one kick in the entire movie. The rest of the action is standard war stuff: explosions and gun-play (circa 1924, to be precise).

'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, but that should not stop Van Damme fans - and even non-fans of Van Damme - from seeing it - 7/10

This is the least typical Van Damme film - and his absolute best. really, if you come to this film expecting a typical Van Damme film, please go see Double Impact or Hard Target again.

Based on a real incident during the 1925 Morocco campaign (and most of us didn't even know there was such a campaign),and highly suggestive of the many versions of Beau Geste that women have wept over in movie-houses for decades, this is a story about the French Foreign Legion. Viewers should be warned that the slogan of the Legion at this time was "March or die!" The only thing that kept these men from killing each other was that the Berbers were so much better at killing them.

The film has an epic structure to it. The cinematography doesn't quite match this, but it is rock-solid. The actors are all very able. Clichés do drift through the film, but the final battle makes up for most of these.

And, oh, yes, Van Damme can actually act. Quite well, when he doesn't let it get to his head.

This Van Damme outing isn't a success because it has "all the right ingredients"; rather, it's a success because it's just so different to the rest of his output. Gone are the brutal martial arts tournaments and battles with hired killers; instead, what we have here is a well-paced tale of heroism, warfare, and man's loyalty to his fellow man. Strong acting from the supporting cast - not to mention Van Damme, who can be all right when given the right type of character - and some excellent desert locations, filmed in Morocco, give LEGIONNAIRE an edge over most of its ilk, and it's a crying shame that this went straight-to-video when bigger-budgeted but poorer movies manage to make it to the cinema screens.

This is Van Damme's most adult film to date, a film which realistically deals with friendship in times of danger. Not only is it a film which is pleasing to watch - the beautifully arid desert locations are complemented by a fine score and good cinematography, whilst the action sequences which depict huge battles full of explosions and the like are well-choreographed and visually excellent - but it's also a good-natured movie which stays with you after the close and leaves you with a good feeling inside, even despite a downbeat ending.

The supporting cast, which includes an excellent Nicholas Farrell and Steven Berkoff, is also uniformly excellent, marred only by the occasional stereotype (the maniac mobster, played over-the-top by Jim Carter, or the strict platoon leader),and the film is awash with good performances. A slower-paced yarn, this takes time to build up the characters and make you care about them before shocking us with high body counts in the war sequences and unflinching deaths for the heroes. Although the story is familiar from all the films that have come before it, LEGIONNAIRE stands true as a good genre film and just goes to show that serious, intelligent action flicks can still be made in this day and age. Someone finally realised it isn't all just about special effects and stunts.