Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery, began as a throwaway movie back in 1986 that turned into a cult classic. What made it different from many of the other action/fantasy genre movies that came out through the 70s and 80s was that it created a mythology that was coherent, mysterious, and romantic. It was also a mythology that was presented in a "real world" setting which gave it a kind of tangibility that people could latch onto, much like the mythology created by the early seasons of the X-Files. The idea that immortals roamed the Earth, keeping their true natures hidden, battling with swords in a great Game for a mysterious Prize that would be awarded to the last surviving immortal was compelling. Highlander offered us a rich story that seamlessly tied the past and present together with humor, tragedy, heroics, and panache. We highly recommend that you watch the Director's Cut of this movie. It really is that good.
After Highlander came a bad movie, Highlander 2: The Quickening, that everyone dubs Highlander: The Sickening. It has become infamous as one of the worst sequels ever to hit the screen. In 91 minutes, it took the mythology of Highlander and shredded it into a science fiction movie. The director and writers had missed the point and the mystique that made Highlander special. They tried to explain why Immortals existed and how the Prize was used. They went through incredible contortions to bring Sean Connery's character back to life so he could appear in this movie. The result was a steaming pile of contradictory garbage. It would actually be a good 7 or more on the Bad Movie Scale, assuming you could watch it without being pissed about how badly they treated the original movie. Do not watch this one - not even the director's cut.
This was followed by a mediocre TV series in 1992 that attempted to compensate for the bad movie by building on the original premise and mythology except for one crucial point. The original movie had ended in a definitive manner - Lambert's character, Connor MacLeod, had won the Prize and all the other immortals were dead. It was a closed story, and thus, not conducive to supplying a series with material. They took the mythology and modified it. Connor did not, in fact, win the prize in this timeline. The battle was still going. In the later seasons of the series, the mythology grew richer and more convoluted as they added more politics and history to the show. Unfortunately, the writers did not have a real plan and the mythology became a comic book caricature of itself.
Then, in 1994, the third of the Highlander movies, Highlander 3: The Sorcerer emerged that disavowed the entire second movie but did nothing to enrich the original except to give a reasonable explanation for why immortals don't fight on Holy Ground. To add insult to injury, it was written in such a similar format to the first, even down to when and how the sex scene with the love interest happened, that we dubbed it The Highlander, version 0.9. It's also commonly known as Highlander: The Apology. We recommend that you skip this one as well.
Now, in the year 2000, we have Highlander: Endgame that manages to invalidate the history of the first three movies, knocking two of them out in the first fifteen seconds of the movie, while both invalidating and incorporating the mythology built around the TV series. Adrian Paul, who played Duncan MacLeod, the Highlander in the TV series, joins Christopher Lambert, the original Highlander, in a battle against the Babe Ruth of immortals who has logged over 600+ heads. After the longest and slowest set of opening credits that we've ever seen, the movie gets underway.
Plot aside, there are two fundamental problems with this movie. The first is that it assumes the audience is stupid. It wastes at least 15 minutes of expository dialogue and cut scenes redescribing the Highlander mythology. This would be acceptable in a first movie. It is absolutely not acceptable in a fourth movie that has a TV spinoff. It would be like watching the next Star Trek: The Next Generation movie and having the characters spend 15 minutes to remind you that Patrick Stewart is playing The Captain of the Enterprise and that their mission is to Go Where No One Has Gone Before. If the rehash wasn't enough, there were many incidents where the audience is beaten over the head, multiple times, with unnecessary reminders of a devastating clue or reference that everyone probably got the first time. If it were a comedy, we would call this technique a running joke. But it isn't, so we call this technique insulting.
The second fundamental problem with this movie is that it's poorly made. The movie seemed to have been guided by a director raised and trained in the music video genre with very little appreciation for solid storytelling. For example, there are some shots of majestic and scenic Scottish castles, filmed by some drunk flying a helicopter carrying a poor schmoe with an unsteady hand at the camera, maybe the same person who filmed The Blair Witch Project, and edited to display in 3 second bursts over a 15 second period. By the end of this montage, we were not entranced by scenic beauty and immersed in legend, we were reaching for Dramamine. Unfortunately the same schmoe did all the camera work for the scenes that took place in Scotland. There were no seamless, artful transitions from past to present; a technique used extensively in the original Highlander movie. In fact, there was little art or beauty anywhere. Even the gratuitous love scene was filmed in a manner designed to trigger epileptic episodes. The fights were the only things that were filmed well and conveyed energy and tension.
In addition, casting was hit-or-miss. Certainly, nobody can play Connor or Duncan MacLeod except for Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. Two other characters from the original movie were brought in briefly. But aside from these four, it's a cast of people you've never heard of. Now, in some movies, it's nice to see fresh new faces getting their first job in a promising career. Expect to see these folks in frozen dinner commercials. Bruce Payne plays a miserable villain. He seems to desperately wish he were David Warner. Donnie Yen will probably go back to playing nameless minions in martial arts flicks, and probably should have simply been one here. Lisa Barbuscia was absolutely horrid and not convincingly Irish. Part of this was the script -- their lines sucked, and it's really tough to deliver this sort of crap well, but part of it is that they simply lacked any ability to suspend your disbelief. The high point of the acting talent is Adam Copeland-- he's credited as Edge. Yes, the same one from the WWF. And he's the high point.
Now, let's talk about the plot. It's a strictly routine action movie with a Highlander twist with one exception: there are roughly 20 very interesting minutes which were decent and they all take place during the middle of the movie. We hated these minutes because for a brief moment, we experienced a glimmer of hope that the movie was going to grow and mature into something better. But it didn't. We hate them even more because it looked like they might give the movie direction, but then, poof, the plot threads we'd gotten a glimmer of just disappear. Gone. Without a trace. Completely unresolved. Instead, the movie degenerates back to formula, and a bad one at that. The villain gives a whole new meaning to the phase "Holding a grudge". There is a femme fatale love interest. There are supporting heroes and supporting villains (who not only manage to die faster than the usual Movie Lemmings but manage to do so with the least amount of effort required). There are various duels. There is the Big Fight at the end of the movie. Ho hum. The movie's lack of coherence is not the fault of the main actors in the movie who do a relatively good job with what they had to work with. We blame the director, Douglas Aarniokoski (last job was first assistant director on The Faculty), and the story writer, Gillian Hovarth (Beverly Hills 90210).
At this point it should be clear that we're recommending that you spend your $5-9 on a good lunch, or better yet a good book. Spending that much money to watch 20 interesting minutes is pointless. The movie's one saving grace is that it was very short (85 minutes) for what it could have been so the pain was over quickly. Our theory is that this movie was made for the same reasons that Star Trek: Generations was made: to ensure a smooth transition from one generation to the next by eliminating the old one. In Star Trek's case, it was killing off James T. Kirk - which, thanks to William Shatner's big ego, was later negated in the book series. In this case, and this should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to the trailers, it was killing off Connor MacLeod and turning the entire mythology over to Duncan. It's just unfortunate that this effort was such a shadow of what it could have been. Save your money to buy or rent the DVD of the director's cut of the original Highlander movie. We give this movie a 4 on the Good Movie Scale and a 3 on the Bad Movie Scale and we hope that this movie gets beheaded so the series can rest in peace.
Our Drive-In Totals:
433 dead bodies (400 of them were in one shot. 2 come back to
life so they probably don't count)
2 gratuitous breasts - really the same breast in 2 separate shots.
2 gratuitous love scenes (but spliced together into a big mess)
5 of the stupidest villain sidekicks ever to grace the movie screen
1 really brief but explosive cameo
1 400 year-old supermodel
1 series of drunken helicopter fly-overs of 4 different Scottish castles
8 re-edited scenes showing the series of helicopter fly-overs that
get
progressively shorter as the movie progresses.
The Grudge That Would Not Die
Software for Headcounting
The Home for Retired Immortals
One Fall from Tall Building onto Sharp Pole cliché
One Spiritual Help wins Duel cliché
One Unstoppable Technique When Executed Properly cliché (Holy
Crane
Technique, Miyagi-San!)
One wedding night with two consummations
2 fist-fights (What's the point of showing fist fights between Immortals?)
One well-timed radial-saw rescue
Kung Fu
Gun Fu
Sword Fu
Manriki-gusari Fu
Polearm Fu
Knife Fu
Iron Bar Fu
Rock Fu
Fire Fu
Gunpowder Fu
Bomb Fu
Good Movie Scale: 4 out of 10
Bad Movie Scale: 3 out of 10
