Lionheart (1990) on Netflix
Lyon Gaultier deserts the French Foreign Legion in Africa to reach his dying brother in Los Angeles. Penniless in New York, he volunteers for an illegal street fight run by Joshua Eldridge.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.2/1043,719 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes39%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lyon Gaultier is a legionnaire stationed in Djibouti. His brother, burned in a drug deal in Los Angeles, has been calling for him, and his brother's wife Hélène writes begging him to come. Lyon breaks out of the Legion, crosses the desert to a coastal dockyard and works his passage to the United States on a tramp steamer. His commander guesses where he is headed and sends two legionnaires after him. Reaching New York with nothing, Lyon is drawn to the illegal street fight Joshua Eldridge is running, wins it, and is taken to Cynthia Caldera, who arranges underground bouts for wealthy spectators. Cynthia takes him on as a fighter. Hélène and her young daughter Nicole are in Los Angeles, and Lyon has to find a way to cross the country to them.
Cast
- James Brewster Thompsonas N.Y. 'Monster' Fighter
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lionheart (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film is two projects welded together: Jean-Claude Van Damme's own outline for an underground fighting picture called The Wrong Bet, and a French Foreign Legion script Sheldon Lettich had written for Sylvester Stallone. When the Legion film collapsed, its backstory was folded into Van Damme's story.
- Stefani Warren's first draft was judged too sentimental to sell, and Van Damme pushed for Lettich to rewrite it; Lettich was eventually hired to direct. By his account the only thing left of Warren's screenplay was the hero's nickname, Lionheart.
- Stung by criticism of his acting, Van Damme wanted a more emotional film, so he and Lettich deliberately threw out the revenge plot standard in martial arts movies and never let the hero find his brother's killers.
- Fighter auditions were held at Frank Dux's gym and drew close to a thousand candidates. Jeff Speakman read lines in Van Damme's place during casting, but took only a small non-fighting part because he was trying to establish himself as an actor rather than a martial artist.
- Ashley Johnson, who plays Van Damme's young niece, got her first acting job by chance: she was on a holiday trip to Los Angeles and went along with family friends to an audition, where she was noticed.
- Directing for the first time, Sheldon Lettich was challenged by some of his crew and fell out so badly with cinematographer Robert C. New that he came close to firing him.
- The car park fight with Jeff Langton was built as one of the film's athletic showpieces, but Van Damme asked to cut it short with a hit to the groin to wrong-foot the audience. His nude scene was his own idea too, requested during the shoot.
