Highlander (1986)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Dusty: Greetings. I am Dusty Juan Sánchez Villalobos Reviews, Chief blogger – well, not the Chief – and lyricist… to, uh, it’s not important. And I’m at your service.

Rating: R
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Writer: Gregory Widen (screenplay and story), Peter Bellwood (screenplay), Larry Ferguson (screenplay)
Stars: Christopher Lambert, Roxanne Hart, Clancy Brown, Sean Connery
Release Date: March 7, 1986
Run time: 1 hour, 56 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki

In 1985 New York, when leaving a wrestling match, Connor MacLeod encounters an old enemy, Iman Fasil, in the parking garage of Madison Square Garden. After a sword duel, Connor beheads Fasil and triggers a powerful energy release — known as a “Quickening” — that affects the immediate surroundings, destroying many cars. After Connor hides his sword in the garage’s ceiling, NYPD officers detain him for murder but later release him due to a lack of evidence.

Connor’s history is revealed through a series of flashbacks. In the Scottish Highlands in 1536, Connor fights against the rival Fraser clan as a warrior of the MacLeod clan. The Frasers are aided by an outlander warrior, the Kurgan, in exchange for his right to slay Connor. In battle, the Kurgan fatally stabs Connor but is driven off before he can behead him. Inexplicably, Connor makes a complete recovery, compelling his lover Kate and his cousin Dougal to accuse him of witchcraft. The clan wishes to kill him, but his other cousin, chieftain Angus, mercifully exiles him. Connor quietly settles into a new life as a blacksmith and marries a woman named Heather MacDonald.

Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, a swordsman from Spain, finds Connor after tracking the Kurgan to Scotland. He explains that he, Connor, the Kurgan, and others like them were born immortals and are destined to battle each other, save on holy ground. Under the overriding belief of all immortals (“In the end, there can be only one”), the few who shall be left will be drawn to a faraway land for the “Gathering”, the final battle for the “Prize”, the power of all the immortals through time. Ramírez reveals that immortals cannot have children and believes they must ensure evil people like the Kurgan do not win the Prize, or else humanity will suffer an eternity of darkness.

Ramírez trains Connor, and the two become friends. One night, while Connor is away, the Kurgan finds his home and duels Ramirez before decapitating him and leaving. Years later, Heather dies of old age; swearing never to love again, Connor wanders the Earth, adopting Ramírez’s katana as his own.

In 1985, the time of the Gathering approaches, and the Kurgan is compelled to come to New York City, where Connor now lives as an antiques dealer under the alias “Russell Nash,” working with his confidant and adopted daughter Rachel Ellenstein. Brenda Wyatt, a metallurgy expert working for the police as a forensic scientist, finds shards of Connor’s sword at Fasil’s death scene and is puzzled they come from a Japanese sword dated around 600 B.C. but made with medieval-era methods. Brenda witnesses the Kurgan attack Connor before police arrive, forcing them to flee. She meets with Connor twice afterward, hoping to learn about the paradoxical sword. Connor likes her but tells her to leave him alone.

Meanwhile, the Kurgan duels and beheads Sunda Kastagir, another Immortal. However, the Kurgan leaves a witness behind who describes him as the killer, concentrating the NYPD’s search on him. Brenda investigates Connor and finds evidence that he has lived for centuries. On Heather’s birthday, Connor lights a candle for her in a church, as he has done every year. The Kurgan arrives and confirms that he and Connor are now the last remaining immortals, and also reveals he raped Heather after killing Ramirez. Disgusted, but prohibited from fighting on holy ground, Connor leaves.

Brenda confronts Connor, who explains his true identity. After spending the night together, they part company, but the Kurgan finds out about their newfound intimacy and kidnaps Brenda to draw Connor out. Connor decides to leave behind the Russell Nash identity, says goodbye to Rachel and confronts the Kurgan at Silvercup Studios in Queens, rescuing Brenda in the process. After a long duel, Connor outfights and decapitates the Kurgan, absorbing his massive power and winning the ultimate Prize. Connor returns to Scotland with Brenda and reveals that he is now a mortal man who can age and have children. He is also now able to read the thoughts and feelings of people all around the world, and remembering Ramirez’s lessons, he hopes to encourage co-operation, understanding, and peace among humanity.

My Review

Forty years ago, Highlander, the best movie ever made was on the big screen.

Actually, I wouldn’t go as far as Ricky Bobby on this topic, but it’s worth mentioning, for the sake of transparency that I was inspired to start my reviews blog by wanting to fill the void left by the lack of Highlander: the Series episode reviews online. All the way back in 2019, while I was bed-ridden and recovering from pneumonia, I binge-watched the entire series and didn’t find enough review material online to suit my desire. That has since been somewhat remedied by myself and others who are more talented and single-minded than I am. But all these years later, you might think I would have reviewed the movie that gave birth to one of my favorite TV shows. Well, finally, as of today, you would be right.

This movie has a lot of flaws, and I’ll get into them, but I still absolutely love it. The cinematography is gorgeous, the film score is elite (QUEEN!), the costuming is excellent, the 16th century Scottish battle early in the film was worth the rest of the film on its own, and the unique spin on a swords and sorcery tale absolutely drew me in. The story concept is so good that you can forgive a lot of its execution failures. That’s actually a long-running issue with the franchise. Everyone is chasing the story format formula to make the concept work as well as we all think it should. No one has ever quite landed on it.

Highlander is extremely well-cast. If you’re going to tell this type of story, you need the characters on screen to feel larger than life. The movie achieves this by casting three incredibly charismatic men for its major leads. Christopher Lambert brings an intense sensitivity to Conner. He’s brooding, loyal, and mysterious. Clancy Brown is AWESOME as the Kurgan. His voice, size, and presence were perfect for the role of the unstoppable Immortal sociopath. My favorite character in the film though is Ramirez, played by Sean Connery. I don’t know how you measure this sort of thing but Connery was one of the most charismatic people who ever lived. I would watch him do almost anything. He sold me on the idea that despite his thick Scottish accent, he was actually an Egyptian, turned Spaniard. You need an enormous amount of charisma to lie so flagrantly and convincingly. He was also perfectly cast as a teacher, too. If I were going to imagine an older mentor figure, arriving on my door like a Middle Earth wizard to explain to me that I am more than I know, he’d be something like Sean Connery.

I do need to acknowledge that a lot of this movie’s story doesn’t make sense. You mean to tell me that people who kill each other and in so doing unleash a property-destroying lightning storm have managed to go under the radar for thousands of years? How does an Immortal get away with carrying swords around everywhere, changing vital records, avoiding security cameras, etc., without eventually drawing the wrong attention. Conner is found out by a pretty bare minimum amount of digging in this film. On top of that, when they fight, they’re on the scene where a body was decapitated. They couldn’t do more to draw attention to themselves. And it’s not like the Kurgan was portrayed as someone willing to be meek.

I think the plot complexity also called for a longer story. The Conner / Rachel subplot was under-baked. His goodbye with his adopted daughter felt as though it should have meant more to me than it did. It also seemed as though we got to “there are only two Immortals left” really quickly without enough build-up. It’s too late now, but you could probably have stretched this plot out over two or three movies and told a better and more fleshed out story.

Some other points:

• The ferocity with which everyone in 16th century Scotland assumed Conner was a devil, and not the product of a miracle, was surprising. I mean… these are Christian people. None of his friends or family made that argument?
• How sharp does a sword have to be to lop off someone’s head in one stroke? Maybe it’s easier with an Immortal because their bodies are (based on what the movie shows) essentially just thin flesh suits covering a lightning storm on the inside?
• I assume that the sparks and explosions during the sword fights are the result of the aforementioned lightning-in-place-of-innards situation.
• The costuming was fantastic. However, you could really only get away with dressing the way that they do in a cold climate. I will set aside my plans to dress like a Highland Clan Chief… for now.
• Antique store owner is a phenomenal cover story for someone hiding the fact he is five hundred years old.

I will start info-dumping random facts into conversations in my every day life in the following way:

One final comment on the plot itself. “The Prize” is mortality? Yes and no, though the freedom to die being a gift is certainly a subtext. The real prize is almost unlimited knowledge and the ability to procreate. But I suppose the prize needed to come with some limitations, too, so Conner will eventually die. That begs the question, though… if something like this happened in real life, and the public didn’t know, how might you identify the former immortal who now knows almost everything?

Would he be rich, famous, a genius inventor, and the father of a small army?

Something to keep in mind, I think.

Anyway, I definitely recommend giving this movie a rewatch if it has been a while. It earns its rating, with violence, bad language, and very brief nudity. Simultaneously, though, it’s a fun sword and sorcery story with a twist and in a modern setting. The cast is fantastic, as are the cinematography and the Queen-driven score. It’s not without its flaws but the positives by far outweigh the negatives.

Have you seen Highlander? If so, what did you think?