Review of Highlander (1986) by Brien B — 28 Aug 2009

In retrospect, this was a fairly bad film, contra my adolescent enthusiasm for fantasy and sword-fighting. Highlander is essentially a basic 80s action film with flashback fantasy sequences and the slight impress of cyberpunk's dystopian images of the city. Highlander is caught between its utopian evocation of the Scottish Highlands and the figuration of city life as shadowy and sinister alienation, represented through the marginal spaces of dimly lit alleyways and parking lots. The Immortals, and their rare swords, provide the mystery and excitement to an otherwise degraded everyday existence.

Unfortunately, Lambert is stiff and wooden as Connor McLeod. Although his beady eyes and beetled brow are effective at suggesting a "deep" character with a mysterious past, his French accent ruins any suspension of disbelief in regards to him being animmortal Scottish warrior. Sean Connery is an even more egregious offender with his thick brogue, an Egyptian (??) pretending to be a vashal of the Spanish prinsh known as Ramirez, another immortal. Why was Sean Connery not the lead? At least the accent would be more appropriate to the role. The fantasy sequences are weak, cliched, and uninteresting, except for the humorous bromance between Ramirez and Connor. Unfortunately, this is interrupted by the Kurgan, played by the usually entertaining Clancy Brown, who kills Ramirez in highly sexualised fashion, experiences uber-Quickening, and rapes Connor's wife. Brown's character has the one classic line of dialogue in the film: "tonight you sleep in hell!" Otherwise known as a screening of Highlander 2.

The rest of the film is by the numbers, with the Kurgan in flamboyantly punk attire taunting Connor, a flimsy love interest, and yet another climactic rooftop battle to save said love interest. Although I can see how the irruption of fantasy into urban life has its appeal, this is an amateurish film which fails to reconcile its pre-modern and urban elements into a coherent narrative whole. This contradiction, already problematic in Highlander, would lead to some of the most notoriously bad sequels of all time. There should've been only one.