Lionheart
A corporate succession comedy shot in family colours: the film's real plot was the argument it started about what a foreign-language film is
The eldest daughter of a shipping magnate, a stroke that hands her the company mid-fight, a brother waiting in the wings and a father who conducts half of his life in Igbo: on paper Lionheart is a comedy of corporate succession dressed in Lagos tailoring, and it plays that way - competently, warmly, a little safely. Its actual historical subject was waiting outside the frame, in the fine print of an awards rulebook.
The craft is solid television-grade raised a class by its lead: blocking that keeps family scenes in the same room instead of cross-cutting them, an office comedy rhythm that mostly trusts its silences, and a physical, lived-in warehouse world that the desk files as the film's best design choice - a shipping company shot as a working body, not a set. The score and cut never embarrass themselves; nor do they reach for the one register, risk, that would make the middle hour unforgettable rather than agreeable.
The ledger's debits are the script's: the antagonist is a scheduling problem, the resolution arrives wearing a family-unity speech, and the business-logic of the succession would not survive a board meeting. Held honestly: this is a film that likes its characters more than it challenges them, which is a valid genre contract - the desk simply refuses to grade it as if the contract were bold.
Weight is where Lionheart vaults its own shelf position. As the first Netflix original from its country's industry it changed what a platform deal meant for the slate economics here, and its exclusion from a foreign-language race on the technicality of its English submission rules had the industry, the diaspora and the rulebook's owners arguing in public about what a 'foreign-language' film from a multilingual country even is. Films are judged by what they do on screen; this one is also remembered for what it did to a form - and on this desk's ledger, that Igbo argument at the edge of the frame outlived most of the plot inside it.
The axes
| Story & structure | 6.5 |
| Performance & craft | 6.5 |
| Direction & technical vision | 6.0 |
| Cultural weight | 7.5 |
| Average — printed score | 6.625 |
Reviewed by The BRYME Entertainment desk on 2026-09-27. Scores follow the published method; they are never sold and never previewed to rights-holders. Disagree? The corrections door is open.