Watched: 02/28/2026
Format: YouTube/ Up All Night
Viewing: First
Director: Sheldon Lettich
Well, I'd made it to 2026 without caring if I ever saw Lionheart (1990), but this was the movie programmed on Rhonda Shear's Up All Night.
Y'all, it's possible Lionheart isn't a great movie.
Jean-Claude Van Damme is a member of the French Foreign Legion hanging out in Djibutte who hears his brother was injured in Los Angeles, so he asks to leave, but is refused. So he - being JCVD - fights his way out, jumps a ship and winds up in Los Angeles doubling for New York.
Back in the 1990's, Bum Fights became a thing. Because exploiting people hadn't been refined into reality TV quite yet. Anyway, Leon (JCVD) enters a bum fight and wins some money. He pairs up with actual actor Harrison Page as a former fighter named Joshua who kind of does all the acting in this movie.
Anyway - they get more fights including one for rich people's amusement organized by a sexy but shady lady, Cynthia (Deborah Rennard). She decides she wants to kind of own JCVD, but he just needs to get to Los Angeles where he learns his brother has died. He goes and finds his brother's widow (Lisa Pelikan) who has amazing red hair, and he moppet of a daughter. She rejects him and his help, so he uses Joshua to slip her money as is it's insurance money.
Eventually he has to fight a much larger guy and the French Foreign Legion guys find him, and that's our movie.
It is not good. It is not awful. It's better than many action movies like it from the era, but not... a lot more? Of this kind of thing, I was more into Cynthia Rothrock movies and very early Seagal. And then I found Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh, and these movies were a pale shadow of those Hong Kong films.
JCVD was known as "The Muscles From Brussels", and he is a very fit dude. I'm just not sure these fights are all that convincing or cool. The average-est TV show now has much better fight choreography. He's not a horrible actor, and has some charisma. I admit, I do not have the affinity for him that many of my generational peers do. I missed his movies at the time mostly because they weren't sci-fi, and in this era if I was paying to see an action movie, it better have a robot or alien or both.
Per Rhonda's segments, they still work like a charm. This show, she brought on two pro-wrestlers - one from GLOW and a former WWE/ AEW guy and then made them compete in thumb wars, making smoothies, etc... and it was kind of the perfect vibe to keep you going when there is no other way I was making it through Lionheart itself.
You can watch the show here:
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