Review: Highlander

Christopher Lambert is Connor MacLeod, a Scottish highlander from 1536AD who discovers that he belongs to a race of immortals. Most of the film takes place in modern day New York, wherein MacLeod and the last of the immortals Kurgan (sadistic, hulking Clancy Brown) are to battle to the death. How can an immortal be killed? There’s only one way and let’s just say Henry VIII and the Queen of Hearts would approve of the method. Roxanne Hart is a befuddled modern-day forensics expert cop caught in the middle of a sword-wielding battle that spans centuries. Sean Connery (who shot all his scenes in about a week!) turns up in the 16^th Century Scotland scenes as Ramirez, an Egyptian-Spaniard (!) an immortal, who acts as MacLeod’s Obi-Wan Kenobi of sorts.

I’ve always struggled with truly nutting out my overall feelings about this highly-stylised 1986 fantasy/action flick from Aussie music video director Russell Mulcahy (“Razorback”, “Ricochet”). It’s kind of a critic brain vs. movie lover brain deal, with the latter generally winning the battle but to varying degrees depending on my mood at the time. It’s also both underrated and overrated, depending on whether you’re talking about critical reception or its cult status with fans. On top of that, the screenplay by the trio of Gregory Widen (“Backdraft”, director of “The Prophecy”), Peter Bellwood (the subsequent “Highlander II: The Quickening”) and Larry Ferguson (“The Hunt for Red October”, “Alien³”) manages to somehow be simultaneously wildly original but at times also wildly indebted to 1984’s “The Terminator”. It’s also got a Frenchman playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spanish-Egyptian. So there’s that, too.

I like the film. I do. That much I definitely know to be true. It’s quite a lot of fun, especially when you leave your brain in another country for a couple of hours. However, there’s so many conflicting feelings about the film, I’m just never sure how much I like it. Watching the film again in 2020, one thing I can indeed say is that the nationalities (and accents) of actors Christopher Lambert and Sir Sean Connery and their respective characters are far less of a problem for me now. The film is about immortals, so who’s to say that a Scotsman hasn’t spent more years in France than his homeland? So fine, I’ll let that one slide. As for the rest? Well let’s get to it then.

We may as well start with the Queen soundtrack, since their highly underrated ‘Princes of the Universe’ is the first thing you’ll hear after the signature Cannon Group logo music ends. If that song doesn’t get you pumped up, check your pulse. It’s a great hard rocker from my favourite Queen album (I thoroughly acknowledge that ‘A Night at the Opera’ might be their best album, but ‘A Kind of Magic’ is the album I listen to most often. It’s basically “Highlander: The Soundtrack”). It’s no surprise to me that the top-notch score comes from Michael Kamen (“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”, the 1993 version of “The Three Musketeers”), as he proved time and time again to be excellent at working with rock musicians - Queen, Bryan Adams, Metallica etc. It’s an immediately great-looking film with excellent cinematography by Gerry Fisher (“The Offence”, the comedic flop “Yellowbeard”), it’s fabulously lit. Mulcahy is definitely one of cinema’s more visually stylish filmmakers, that’s for damn sure. Mulcahy is one of the best of the MTV generation of directors. In addition to the fabulously lit modern day New York scenes, the Scottish scenery is lovely too. Yes, the film is style over substance, but more because the substance is a bit lacking, not that the style is over-indulged.

Christopher Lambert is no master thespian, especially outside of the French language. However, he doesn’t fare too badly in the film’s lighter moments. It’s when he’s called upon for stronger dramatic moments that he (in just his second English-language film) falters. He’s a walking stiff with a furrowed brow and cross-eyed gaze. That said, you still feel for Connor having to watch his love grow old and die while he remains the same. Queen’s haunting ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’ helps a lot, though. Clancy Brown is on hand for the film’s dopier, fish-out-of-water dark comedy moments. However, as unsubtle as he is, he’s nonetheless a lively, imposing, and chaotic presence throughout the film. It’s a broadly entertaining performance in a film with two rather stiff romantic leads. Sir Sean Connery is terrific, bringing energy, charm, gravitas and humour in his plum supporting role. The only real dud in the cast is actually Roxanne Hart, who is terrible and charmless in a fairly important, if not especially well-written role. The woman can’t act in a film that already stars Christopher Lambert for crying out loud.

A lot of people seem to find the film confusingly plotted. I disagree and would point to the subsequent “Highlander II: The Quickening” (either cut of the film) as being far more confusing. However, it has to be said that the romantic coupling with Lambert and Hart makes zero narrative sense whatsoever. It’s not just rushed, they don’t seem to even like each other and then immediately they’re fucking. I mentioned with Brown’s Kurgan that the film has some fish-out-of-water comedy, and if you’ve seen any of the “Terminator” films you’ll know what to expect. And that’s one of the problems with the film, as much as the central idea of immortals travelling through time decapitating one another sounds original…it’s pretty much a variant on “The Terminator”. Worse than the similarities in premise, the film indulges in some of the weaker things about that otherwise masterful action-thriller. Don’t get me wrong, this is by far the best “Terminator” variant and a good film overall. However, the scenes of Kurgan tearing shit up in modern day America and scaring the shit out of people, just reeks of bad fish-out-of-water comedy and bad plagiarism. It’s hit and miss in that department, whereas in “The Terminator” films the comedy mostly works (Perhaps not so much in “Rise of the Machines” with the Elton John glasses and so forth). The Kurgan character engages in a few too many goofy antics for my taste that take away a little bit of the threat his character poses, as well as not being remotely original. They are the most overtly unoriginal moments in the film, they’re unquestionably influenced by “The Terminator”. On the plus side, there’s a terrific duel between Ramirez and Kurgan in a crumbling castle, and a genuinely funny bit involving a Revolutionary duel featuring MacLeod off his tits drunk. So it’s not like there aren’t moments of comedy that work. It’s just that the fish-out-of-water stuff is going a little bit too far in ripping off “The Terminator” (Unsurprisingly, some of these scenes are set to the worst song off ‘A Kind of Magic’, the idiotic ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ – Funnily enough, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon hated ‘Gimme the Prize’ a hard rock Brian May penned song that I very much like).

Queen, wrestling (The Fabulous Freebirds and The Tonga Kid!), decapitations, Medieval Scotland, and Sean Connery….what more do you want out of a film? Far from a great film, it sure is a fun one, though. It’s just that some of it is so great you end up a bit disappointed that the whole thing isn’t great. Excellently shot, excellently scored, dynamically directed, occasionally derivatively plotted. Accept no sequels, TV adaptations, or substitutes. There can be only one!

Rating: B