Lionheart
Directed by Sheldon Lettich
- action
The story
Lyon Gaultier is a deserter in the Foreign Legion arriving in the USA entirely hard up. He finds his brother between life and death and his sister-in-law without the money needed to heal her husband and to maintain her child. To earn the money needed, Gaultier decides to take part in some very dangerous clandestine fights.
What it’s like
Gritty, sun-washed 1990 action with a late-80s video-store look: hard overhead light in Los Angeles warehouses and back-alley gyms, flat fluorescent glare, sweaty close-ups and grainy handheld framing during the fights, then a cooler, glossier sheen in the upscale apartments of the rich. The score is synth-pop and pounding electronic percussion that lifts every bout into a surge of adrenaline, while the quieter scenes lean on plain dialogue and ambient street noise. Its vibe is scrappy, earnest and nostalgic, the kind of movie that suits a Friday night with friends or a late, loud solo rewatch. Pacing is brisk and training-montage driven, with long stretches of clandestine bouts broken by hospital-corridor sentiment and a rough-edged loyalty between a lone fighter and the family he is trying to save. The emotional register stays sincere and a little melodramatic, following a wandering, proud outsider who slowly learns to trust people again. Violence is frequent and stylised, with punches, kicks and bloody fistfights shown plainly but not in extended gore, and there is some drug-dealing menace, class-tinged cruelty and sporadic peril. It suits fans of late-80s martial-arts cinema who want big, unpretentious fights and a warm family core.
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