Legionnaire

The regulation Van Damme butt shot is disposed with early in the film, and as he has always, Jean-Claude plays the only character he's ever managed; the reluctant, good at heart, hard fighting hero.

But there isn't a martial arts high kick in the whole film for the devotees, and that would have to be a major flaw.

Jean-Claude is famous for his high swinging kicks to his adversaries heads.

And Jean-Claude Van Damme can be in entertaining films, or at least in one entertaining film. John Woo's Hard Target was a beauty, with Woo able to capitalise on Jean-Claude's gracefulness, but unfortunately John Woo had nothing to do with Legionnaire.

Our hero in Legionnaire is a member of the French Foreign Legion, off to war on behalf of the glorious French colonial forces which is ripping into the Arabs in the sands of some un-named country.

He's a warrior alright but a professional boxer on the run from gangsters who wanted him to throw a fight - and it would have been far fetched I'd imagine, in even a Van Damme film, for a European Legionnaire to be an expert in kick boxing in the early part of this century. Hence his feet remain firmly planted.

So there's a fairly extended first act with the star as a boxer, I think in Paris, and then the film segues into the regulation Foreign Legion long march across the desert to the fort and then to the battle, cowboys and Indians style, between the gallant French Forces and the marauding, circling Arabs.

Now I was soon strongly urging on the locals in their struggle against the mongrel Imperialist French forces that shouldn't have been there in the first place (just ask any present day non-French Algerian about that!) but that still left me with plenty of time during the film to ponder a couple of things.

Why did the Arabs have heaps of horses and the French none. And how violent will combat films have to be now to match Saving Private Ryan. And why did the film end so abruptly? Did the film makers get sick of it too?