Lionheart - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Lionheart



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
I know I’m going to sound like an old man here, but they don’t make em like they used to anymore. Growing up in the 80s and 90s was a glorious thing. We got to drink from the hose, come home from playing with our friends when it was just getting dark, and the concerts. Oh boy, the concerts. I remember being a teenager in the mid 90s and being able to go out to a concert with my buds, spend $20 to get in, AND come home with merch. Those days are long gone, with $15-$20 movie theater prices, $160 - $1,000 to see a good band, and movies have bigger and bigger budgets, but less and less appeal. Yet back in 1990 you could make a martial arts movie for $6 million and make a tidy profit. All the while cheering for heavily muscled men to beat the ever-living snot out of each other. The things the next generation missed out on.

Lionheart was one of Van Damme’s simpler early films, having already gotten international fame for Bloodsport, Cyborg, and Kickboxer. But it was one of his most authentic films of the time period. There was no massive underground Kumite. There was no post-apocalyptic nightmare, nor was he in Thailand to avenge his brother’s death. This time Jean-Claude is Lyon, a French Foreign Legion member who gets word that his brother has been killed during a drug deal gone bad back home in Los Angeles. Even though he only has six months left on his tour with the Legion, Lyon abandons post and hitches a boat back to America so that he can help out his brother’s widow Helene (Lisa Pelikan) and his niece Nicole (a 7-year-old Ashley Johnson in one of her first roles).

But arriving back in the States, he finds his sister-in-law angry at him for abandoning family, and with no money in his pocket he’s an easy target for the Legionaries sent to take him home. Luckily, he falls in with fast-talking Joshua (Harrison Page), a jive-talking street fight manager who just so happens to have some connections with some big players. That big player turns out to be Cynthia (Deborah Rennard), a cold-blooded fight manager who sets up fights for rich folks to get their kicks out of. And Lyon (dubbed “Lionheart” because of his name) is the perfect specimen to make her a LOT of money.

As I said, Lionheart is probably one of the simplest plots of his early career outside of Bloodsport. It’s basically “soldier fights in French Foreign Legion...soldier escapes and fights to earn money for his family….soldier kicks butt...the end”. But who cares, we’re here for Van Damme to do some Van Dammage, and that he does in spades. The man was just on the verge of becoming the superstar he would be for the next decade, and he was in peak physical form. He had the martial arts chops that only the Hong Kong market had a monopoly on, and he had the sex appeal and charisma too. A hunk of chiseled granite with a thick accent and kicks that would make Benny the Jet jealous. And while the movie didn’t do AMAZING at the box office, it did pretty well considering it made $24 million on a $6 million budget.

Fun little fact moment. Van Damme notoriously came to America with his best friend and martial arts collaborator, Michel Qissi, to make it in the film industry. And the pair were still working heavily together when Lionheart came out, along with Michel’s older brother Abdul. Michel was his big nemesis in Van Damme’s last picture, Kickboxer, as the evil Tong Po, and while Michel isn’t the big baddie in this film (that’s Abdul here, as the killer fighter, Attila), but he does show up as the bearded Legionnaire sent to take him home. Sadly, the Qissi’s never made it huge in Hollywood, but Van Damme made sure to include them in multiple projects over the years (with Abdul getting several villain roles over the years, including the Mongolian in The Quest and a baddie in The Order).




Rating:

Rated R for graphically violent fight scenes and for strong language




4K Video: Video:

MVD released both the theatrical and extended cuts of the film back in 2019, and it looks like they used the same native 4K master that they used for that release for this one as well. That being said, I find it strange that they only put the extended cut on 4K, and left the theatrical cut only on the Blu-ray edition. It’s not the end of the world, as I find the extended cut (only about 5 or 6 minutes of extra footage) to be the superior cut, but I always am a purist for making sure the theatrical cut is given equal time on the disc. But that little nitpick aside, the image looks quite nice. The MVD Blu-ray was actually cropped ever so slightly to 1.78:1, but the 4K UHD disc opens that up to the theatrical 1.85:1 framing. Again, nothing huge,e as 1.78:1 to 1.85:1 is negligible at best, and commonly used to be a thing to crop down to 1.78:1 back in the day. But it IS nice to see the film in its original aspect ratio, even as slight as the differences are.

Fine details are solid, though there are some grain spikes and print damage still present (vertical line at 1 hour 33 minutes and 50 seconds), with a speckle or two here or there. But overall the image looks nice. A bit white on the skin tones, with a slightly pale look to colors as well. Blues and reds really pop off the screen, but a majority of the time is spent in the darkness of underground fight arenas. Blacks are deep and inky, though sometimes shadow detail gets a bit lost due to the white push. Nothing spectacular, but a healthy upgrade over the mediocre image quality that the MVD (and the old Universal Blu-ray) suffered from.








Audio:

While the MVD Blu-ray featured a lossless 2.0 theatrical mix in LPCM lossless, it DID have the old DVD-era 5.1 Dolby Digital track as well. Something that the 4K UHD omits from the release. Again, I’m not really butt-hurt about this though, as the 5.1 was an upmix meant for the DVD era, and was a pretty front-heavy mix to begin with. I’ll take having a lossless theatrical mix every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Said 2.0 mix is still solid, with good imaging and strong presence with the score. Dialog comes through cleanly, and I can’t fault the mix for much outside of being a low-budget action movie track from 36 years ago. It does what it does well, but won’t amaze anyone.

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Extras:

Disc One: 4K UHD
• NEW Audio Commentary by Director Sheldon Lettich moderated by Heath Holland

Disc Two: Blu-ray
• Archival Audio commentary by Sheldon Lettich & Harrison Page (on Extended Cut only)
• "Lionheart: The Inside Story" (2018, HD, 47:29) (Featuring interviews with cast and crew including star / co-writer Jean-Claude Van Damme, Director / Co-Writer Sheldon Lettich, Producer Eric Karson and stars Harrison Page, Deborah Rennard and Brian Thompson)
• "Inside Lionheart with the Filmmakers and Cast" (2018, HD, 25:52) (Featurette with interviews with cast and crew including star Jean-Claude Van Damme)
• "Lionheart: Behind the Fights" (2018, HD, 10:19) (Featuring interviews with cast and crew including star Jean-Claude Van Damme)
• Archival "Making of" featurette
• Archival Interview with Sheldon Lettich
• Archival Interview with Harrison Page
• 5 Promotional TV Clips
• Behind the Scenes Photo Gallery
• Original Theatrical Trailer

Final Score: ​

Personally, I find Lionheart to be one of the most fun, but still one of the weakest of Van Damme’s early career. It’s a full 4.5/5 movie for fun, but structurally the film is a bit low budget and cheesy, even for the time period. It works, but it has the narrative of a made-for-TV film at the time. But I can’t take my eyes off the flick despite its flaws. Van Damme is great in every fight of the film, and Cynthia and her minion Russell (Brian Thompson) are absolutely eating up the scenery every time they come out. And let's face it, the fights are objectively more fun than the stories in this film, and Lionheart has a couple of the most iconic fight scenes in all his career. So again, I’ll forgive them and give this a solid compromise rating. MVD’s 4K UHD looks good, sounds good, and has a solid array of extras that are mostly found on the legacy MVD Blu-ray (that is included to make this a combo pack). All in all, I give this 3.5 out of 5 round house kicks.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Ashley Johnson, Brian Thompson, Ash Adams, Jeff Speakman, Harrison Page, Michel Qissi, Abdul Qissi
Directed by: Sheldon Lettich
Written by: Sheldon Lettich, Jean-Claude Van Damme
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: LPCM 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: MVD
Rated: R
Runtime: 109 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: July 28th, 2026

Recommendation: LIOOOOOOOOOOOOONHEEEEEEEEEEART!!!!