Lionheart (1990)

Lionheart arrives from 1990 with the quiet confidence of a film that has no interest in being anything other than what it is. Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a French Foreign Legion deserter who flees to America, learns his brother is dying, and enters the underground fighting circuit to keep the man's widow and child afloat. The plot is lean, the motivation is familial, and the film never pauses to inform the audience that any of this is meaningful. It simply proceeds. There is something almost restful about a picture so untroubled by the need to make a point.

The supporting cast includes Harrison Page as Joshua, the shifty manager who becomes the hero's ally, and his presence is unremarkable in the best sense. He is a Black actor in a major role, and the film treats this as neither a statement nor an oversight. It simply casts him. Elsewhere, the villainy belongs to Cynthia Caldera, a promoter who arranges brutal fights for wealthy spectators and bets her fortune against the man she has been exploiting. The film's contempt for her is genuine, but it is aimed at a person, not a system. She is a bad individual with money, which is a different proposition from a critique of the money itself.

Women in the film exist as a grieving sister-in-law and a scheming promoter, and the film shows no interest in expanding either beyond her function. There is no romance here with the culture's newer sensitivities, no sermon, no cause. What remains is a martial arts vehicle that understands its assignment and completes it without editorializing. In an era that increasingly rewards films for telling viewers what to think, this one asks only that they watch a man kick someone in a swimming pool. That is a modest ambition, honestly held.