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A fight film for those who found Rocky III too intellectually demanding. It is hard to know which is the more sickening: the brutality or the sentiment, as Mr Van Damme becomes a bare-knuckle fighter for love of a little niece so cute that she makes Orphan Annie look like the Bride of Frankenstein. The screenplay is chiefly notable for its courageous use of cliche. A white-coated doctor somehow manages to remain straight-faced while saying of a dead patient "He's gone, and nothing we can do will bring him back". My favourite line remains, however, "Zis eez ze Foreign Legion... not ze Club Med."This is a film so naive that it is highly entertaining, and further endearing proof that Mr Van Damme is to screen-acting what Saddam Hussein is to humanitarianism.
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MIXED
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The scenes between fights appear either mawkish or stupid, so the only reason for seeing the film would be for the action [which is] well-staged if you like that sort of thing... one for the fan-club only."
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| (Michael Darvel, What's On in London) |
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An action movie pure and simple, and apart from the presence of one of the most winsomely obnoxious of child actors I've ever seen on the screen, has a certain basic entertainment value you can't deny.
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| (Derek Malcolm, Guardian) |
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Vintage B-movie shlock.
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| (Hugo Davenport, Daily Telegraph) |
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A curious mixture of dumb action and dumber sentiment... but in its own crude way it is twice as sincere and thrice as entertaining as cynical money-spinning exercises such as Another 48 Hours.
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| (Anne Billson, Sunday Correspondent) |
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ANTI
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Junk.
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| (Steven H. Scheuer, Movies on TV and Videocassette, 1992) |
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Musclebound action... sentimental when it is not violent.
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| (Halliwell's Film Guide, 2004) |
, Deborah Rennard, Harrison Page
