Lionheart

Van Damme’s fourth release, and his second screen play, Lionheart is about a French Legionnaire, Lyon Gaultier – Van Damme, who goes AWAL when he receives a letter from his sister-in-law, Helene Gaultier – played by Lisa Pelikan, telling him that his brother has been badly burned in a drug deal gone bad. Van Damme flees North Africa and makes his way to the United States, he arrives in New York where he has no money, food, or means of reaching his family in LA, when he comes across a underground fight circuit with no rules and a big payout. The manager of the fight club, Joshua – played by Harrison Page, takes Lyon under his wing and gets him an introduction to the highly paid, upscale fight club. Lyon uses his fighting skill to travel to LA where he meets up with family. By time he reaches LA it is too late and his brother has died. In order to help his sister-in-law make ends meet and provide a better life for her and his niece, Nicole – played by Ashley Johnson, he fight on the west coast circuit of the fight club in hopes to make enough money to move his family out of their depressed neighborhood and into a better life.

Lionheart is built on the same platform as Bloodsport and Kickboxer, single-opponent arena fighting action sequences. In this film, Van Damme has three brief fights sequences outside of the fight club circuit, one while he is expecting the French Foreign Legion another when he is trying to get away from two captains from the Legion that came to bring him back, and the third is when he fights off a group of thugs attempting to mug he and Joshua, his manager. Other than these three scenes the bulk of fighting take place in the fight clubs.

Van Damme is featured in seven fight club scenes. Realizing that this approach to film making is becoming repetitive director Sheldon Lettich, wisely incorporates environment changes into the story to give Lionheart and element of originality. Because the fighting is illegal many of the contests take place in private locations; parking garages, private residences, country clubs, etc… Simultaneously Van Damme’s fighting style has taken on some variety as well. Considering the nature of these clubs and there participants the contest are violent and brutal therefore Van Damme incorporates more straight punches and elbows. There are also more throws in this movie than in the others. Most of the fights end with the looser near death and badly beaten. To get this effect most of the hits land on the head and face. Van Damme still employs his signature, seeing as how this is his fourth movie and he has used it in all four it is his signature, round-house and jumping round-house kicks. He uses very little if any splits in this film, again as a means of portraying the brutal nature of this kind of fighting. As for the final fight sequence to further sets this movie apart, we are not introduced to the final fighter until the end of the movie and all we know is that he is unbeaten and seemingly unbeatable. To further stack the deck against Van Damme’s character he fights with a broken rib. The final fight, similar to Cyborg, features a lot of punching from the heel. The punches show the brutality and force of the heel and that directly contrasts the skill and agility of Van Damme’s kicking.

While there is not much in the way of new moves or techniques Van Damme does attempt to diversify by utilizing more punching, which in the end does pay off because Lionheart does come across as something different from his previous films.