It's 1925 Marseille. Boxer Alain Lefevre (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is forced to take a dive by crime boss Lucien Galgani. His ex-fiancée Katrina happens to be Lucien's girl. They plan to run off to America after he wins the fight. The plan goes wrong and he escapes by joining the Foreign Legion. He is sent to Morocco to battle the locals. Lucien sends assassins to kill Alain.Jean-Claude Van Damme is in a movie with an actual story. It doesn't make the movie good. The story is full of questionable plot points. The start is not that tense. I kept waiting for him to join the Foreign Legion. After all, that's the point of the movie. There are some relatively good war action. Overall, Van Damme is not good enough of an actor to make it without kick fighting.

for a Van Damme movie,this isn't half bad.there's some pretty good action sequences,and the dramatic scenes aren't too shabby either.it's not a great film,by any stretch,but it is almost good.too bad the general premise is fairly weak and unoriginal,though i admit there were some details that were a bit different.i will admit that i actually cared about the characters,or some of them,anyway.maybe i'm becoming soft.there is a more human element to this film than many of Van Damme's efforts.i was really impressed by Van Damme's flawless French accent.oh.wait,that's his real accent.oh,well,at least his character and his accent fit together for once.also,the movie ended differently than i expected,in a good way.overall,not too bad an effort.better than "The Quest",which is my least favourite Van Damme film so far .for me,"Legionnaire" is a 5.5/10

It's 1924; in Marseilles, France and boxer Alain Lefevre goes on to win a fight that he was supposed to take a dive in. He had it all planned out that he would win and then leave with his old girlfriend (who's now with the mobster) to head to America. However things go terribly wrong, and this leads to Alain joining the Foreign Legion to mould a new identity to escape from those mobsters. Although this second chance is going to be a hell of an ordeal. What good can come from a straight-to-video, Jean-Claude Van Damme action film? Well, you know won't be expecting a masterpiece or even a great movie. So it gotta crash and burn. But wait a minute. "Legionnaire" actually breaks that trend, to be one of Van Damme's better movies of recent years. Hey, it's probably my favourite of his and that's saying a lot when compared to "Time Cop", "Universal Cop" and "Nowhere to Run". I don't know why I enjoyed this film so much, but even with my second outing, it delivered the minor goods in a simple, flourishing formula. There's no escaping the old-hat concept creaking in the set-up. It might be a change of scenery. Although, it's no different from a ordinary war film with an assortment of token characters setting up a loyal partnership to pull together when it gets tough going. There's no pretensions to its clichéd material and while, its contrived and heavily laced with them. It seems to get away this dramatic edge and its survival of the fittest message is passionately orchestrated. Most of these men are burdened souls, escaping from life or trying to prove something. This is why these comrades hold a strong emotional rapport with each other, as they know when they signed up there was no release clause to fall back on. The gleefully, corn-riddled script provides plenty of overstrained melodrama and electrically campy banter. The camera-work is swiftly executed and an elegant music score that could turn fiery in an instance are resourcefully worked in. The performances aren't anything special, but surprisingly competent and workable. Vann Damme is *cough* … solid, yes that's true. He's portrayal is quite convincing and subdued in his blistering like attitude. There's good turns by Nicholas Farrell, who chimes in as an optimistically, witty British man, Mackintosh and Daniel Caltagirone as the fickle Guido. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is an excellent character-actor and he does wonders with a plain stereotypical character, Luther. They were quite a likable bunch that we got to know. Steven Berkoff is compulsively good as the hot-wired Sgt. Steinkampf.When watching Van Damme flicks we know there's must be some kick-ass martial arts when he's wiping the floor of the bad dudes. Oh no, that hardly happens here at all. There are a couple of moments, but they are short lived. It plays for a meaningful war film, where its main focus is the high-octane battle scenes than just one-on-one combat. Sometimes the action does play second fiddle to the inner-goings of the men, but the loud, relentless war scenes were well organised and made for a more believable rough 'n' tumble foray. This just proved how much the French army were out of their league when facing the skilfully quick and deadly Arabs on their turf. Here he's no potent individual, but relies on his comrades to look over his back. Few surprises occur and knee-jerk jolts find there way into the warfare. When it came to the final minutes it seemed to lose a bit of creditability, to what has happen before it. An ambitious detour to the formula for Van Damme, but it mostly worked out and delivers undemanding entertainment.

I do not recommend this movie as it does not follow JCVD's typical formula. As a B-grade actor, one must quickly learn to stick to what they can do (or capable of). There is far too much dialogue in this film to warrant as a martial arts film, and not enough good acting to warrant as an Oscar, yet strangely I managed to finish the movie. I do not think it was out of respect for Van Damme, but his subtlety as an actor. Perhaps he has developed, fine tuning his skills not only with his brawn but, his mind. I would only recommend this if you had absolutely nothing else to do on a lazy Sunday. If you watched this movie on any other day of the week that would be very sad.