Thursday, 19 January 2012

Legionnaire

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Year:1998
Country of origin:USA
Director:Peter MacDonald
Genre:Confused actioner
Starring:Jean-Claude Van Damme, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Steven Berkoff
Rating:3/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126388/
Tagline:From The Producer Of The Crow And The Director Of Rambo III
Favourite line:"It's good to see an old face. Even as ugly as yours."

Humdrum, end of the line action adventure fodder for the Belgique freak.

Man Slamme plays Alain Lefevre, a professional boxer who is one day approached by gangsters to drop in a fight.
The deal?
Drop and be richly rewarded, stay up and be dead within days.
Alain plays along but, in the heat of battle, has a change of heart so he wins the fight, makes off with the swag and joins the Foreign Legion.
So far, so Long Cord.
The remainder of the movie is spent following the travails of the Legion platoon he joins, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, all very afternoon movie on BBC2.

Lacking any real venom once the initial boxing sequences are dispensed with, this is a mixed affair, seeming not to know what it wants to be; epic war movie, fun filled knockabout or sinister gangster action.
Whilst far from the worst Man Slamme movie out there, this one fails to get out of second gear, I'm afraid, and certainly won't live in the memory for too long.
Well, maybe the lingering upward scrolling shot of L'homme Belgique might stick around for a while, if nothing else.

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