Going back to the well to reassess a movie you disliked only to find it became a bona fide cult film is a job I take infrequently. Such is the case with "Highlander" and its immortals and my recent excursion into the bowels of bromanship amidst flying jet planes with "Top Gun." Both films were released in 1986 though "Highlander" was a film I did not check out until home video in 1993. I disliked "Highlander" and found it boring, stiff and clunky. Watching it again, I still find I dislike it and it is still boring, stiff and clunky. Just because it became a cult hit that spawned several sequels and an animated series, not to mention a live-action series, doesn't mean it rates as wonderful.
The movie begins at a wrestling match with actual wrestlers (and a very young girl in the audience flicking her tongue - what is that all about?) Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) is in the crowd of spectators who is not enjoying the action (and we see quick flashbacks to a different time of Scottish warriors fighting to the death with swords). Meanwhile, Connor runs out and confronts some guy in a business suit and they start fighting with swords that emit sparks when clashing against the metal and parking barriers. This all takes place in a parking lot and the business suit guy is actually an immortal and Connor decapitates him. The whole lot is practically levelled and lightning strikes Connor (this is called the quickening). Turns out Connor is an immortal himself, a 16th-century immortal born in Glenfinnan, Scotland near the shores of Loch Shiel (a phrase repeated more than once). We see flashbacks to a time in the Scottish Highlands where he barely fought anyone during the war with the Fraser Clan until he is seemingly mortally wounded by the menacing warrior, the Kurgan (Clancy Brown). Of course, Connor doesn't die and the townspeople oust him from their land thinking he is a devil of some kind.
These early scenes lack panache and the swordfights are utterly dull - there is no real spatial sense of any real action occurring and it is all poorly staged and edited. The only real panache comes from the arrival of Sean Connery as Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, a born immortal (like Connor) who is not a Spaniard but in fact Egyptian! Pardon? Nevertheless Connery kept me awake and shows the life force of a man enjoying his time on Earth, making the most of it with passion and verve (and he likes to drink).
Once Connery exits prematurely from the movie, "Highlander" suffers a quickening of tedious scenes of sword fighting and more fighting. Lambert is not bad here as Connor, and he has some humorous lines in the 1985 section where he is Russell Nash, an antiques dealer, but he is not strong enough to carry the weightless script. Clancy Brown can grate the nerves as the Kurgan and is far more hideously over-the-top than needs be (though his shouting at the nuns and a priest in a church is a little more animated than anything else in the movie). Some sweeping shots of Scotland are awe-inducing yet the finale, a swordfight that goes on forever, is set on top of the roof of some building with neon letters that read "SILVERCUP." You don't see much since they are nighttime shots and it is hard to care who lives or dies, or just who lives (they are immortals but decapitating them is the only way to destroy them). "Highlander" has its fans and is of major cult status but this movie was about as exciting as watching somebody watching wallpaper dry.
