Legionnaire (film)

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Legionnaire
DVD cover
Directed by	Peter MacDonald
Produced by	Christian Halsey Solomon Kamel Krifa Sheldon Lettich Peter MacDonald Roberto Malerba Richard G. Murphy Edward R. Pressman Jean-Claude Van Damme
Written by	Sheldon Lettich Rebecca Morrison Jean-Claude Van Damme
Starring	Jean-Claude Van Damme Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Music by	John Altman
Cinematography	Douglas Milsome
Editing by	Mike Murphy Christopher Tellefsen
Distributed by	Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s)	December 3, 1998
Running time	98 mins
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35,000,000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Legionnaire is a 1998 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a 1920s boxer who wins a fight after having been hired by gangsters to lose it, then flees to join the French Foreign Legion. The cast includes Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Steven Berkoff, Nicholas Farrell and Jim Carter.

1 Plot
2 Cast
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Alain Lefevre (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a French boxer in 1920's Marseilles, France. Alain is forced by local crime boss Lucien Galgani (Jim Carter) to take a dive in a fight.

It turns out that Galgani's girlfriend Katrina (Ana Sofrenovic) is also Alain's ex-fiance whom he left standing at the alter. But Katrina forgives Alain, and the two hatch a plan to run off to America together.

Alain doesn't take a dive in the fight, but just as the escape plan is about to succeed, Alain's friend gets killed, and Katrina is captured by Galgani's men. But Alain has shot and killed Galgani's brother.

Desperately needing a new escape plan, Alain signs up for the French Foreign Legion, and is shipped to Africa to help defend French territory against a native Arab rebellion.

Along the way, Alain meets some new friends, including an African American who's fled injustice in the States, a former British Army Major with a gambling problem, and a naive Italian boy who wishes to impress his girl back home by returning as a hero.

But things will not be easy. The only real way to escape from the Legion is to survive the term of service, and the rebels have them outnumbered.

And Galgani has sent his hired thugs into the Legion as well, to find Alain and get revenge for the death of Galgani's brother.

Deemed unreleasable for movie theaters in the United States, Legionnaire was released on home video despite a 35 million dollar production budget.^[1]