Lionheart

Right now you can watch Lionheart in Australia on Hoopla, and in the US on Amazon Prime Video and fuboTV — and it moves faster than most of the genre's competition. The length is exactly right for the story it is telling — nothing rushed, nothing dragged out. 1,174 people have weighed in on TMDB, and the verdict leans heavily positive. No filler scenes, no spinning wheels between the action. Start it on Hoopla whenever you need something guaranteed to land.

Whatever else is competing for your attention this week, Lionheart is worth clearing space for. The choreography in Lionheart serves the story instead of interrupting it. 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. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Harrison Page lead a cast that gives the action real stakes. Lionheart came out in 1990. The action sequences are expensive-looking without drawing attention to their own budget — they serve the story rather than interrupting it. It knows exactly what it is, and does not try to be anything else.

Lionheart is the kind of thing you put on to unwind and find yourself sitting forward twenty minutes in. It stands on its own even without an obvious comparison point. A contained runtime means every scene is doing real work. Jean-Claude Van Damme brings a physicality to the role that elevates every set piece. Action that earns its sequences rather than just delivering them.