An oldie but a classic JCVD movie. If you just want to watch some action without thinking too much then this is for you.

Let me be honest and say it from the beginning. I am a huge Van Damme fan. Now that the biased is declared lets get into the review. Legionnaire was the highest straight to DVD movie ever made. Yes, Van Damme was so huge back in the day's of 90's action films that this film's cost was over $20 million dollars and it didn't even get Cinema release. Which was a shame. The film is definitely not as bad as some of the action movies we see today. Van Damme plays Alain Lefevre, a boxer who is paid to take a dive. Alain is to proud to do that and win's the fight that costs gangsters a lot of money, he tries to flee France and go to America, But after being the fight 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.You can tell Van Damme co-wrote it: He gives himself a lot of acting time on screen as to try and break away from the typical films he usually does, and not much ass-kicking time, but then again you still 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 some fighting scene in the end, but really different from all of his other films fight choreography. This really does film like a whole different genre for Van Damme to tackle. '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, and I can say that the film was still enjoyable to watch and much more enjoyable to watch because of Van Damme's performance.

First of all, we got to know this is a Van Damme movie. Taking that into consideration, it is a very good movie. I've watched it several times now, and it really has something special, at least for me. I watch those ratings, like everybody do, when I'm searching for films to watch. But, the ratings are often very misleading, in both ways. So, I'm watching really bad and boring films with ratings 8, and I get turned off of perfectly good films with ratings from 4.5 to 6. Unfortunately, we can't watch all the films, and there will be missed good films, and a lot of bad films watched, but if you want an interesting story, not expecting too much, and have a lot of nice scenes, then don't miss this one. Give it a chance, it's a good film.

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.