Many years ago, I think back when I was in college, I saw Highlander on VHS when one of my friends rented it (remember VHS tapes and movie rental stores?). So it's been a good 30 years since I had last seen it. When it showed up in one of the free preview weekends that DirecTV likes to offier, I recorded it in order to be able to watch it again to do a post on. It's showing up again tomorrow, Oct. 11, at 12:16 PM on HBO Zone, so now is as good a time as any for the review.
The movie starts off in the present day, or late 1985 since the movie was released in 1986. A man named Russell Nash (Christopher Lambert) is watching pro wrestling at Madison Square Garden when he seems to spot somebody he knows. The two men end up in the parking garage, where the other guy pulls out a sword! Russell, fortunately, has a sword of his own, and the two start a swordfight in which Nash wins by decapitating his opponent, after which special effects mayhem ensues.
Flash back to the highlands of Scotland in the year 1536. Connor MacLeod (also Christopher Lambert) is about to go to battle for the first time against a rival clan. But the other clan has brought in a guy called Kurgan (Clancy Brown) who specifically wants to behead Connor. In the battle Connor gets stabbed in a way that would kill normal people, but not beheaded. The result is that he survives his injuries, which horrifies his clan who believe Connor must be in league with the devil to be able to survive an attack like that.
Connor and his girlfriend are banished, and it's there that Connor learns thow whole story, thanks to a traveling Egyptian named Juan Sánchez Villalobos Ramírez (played with an obviously non-Spanish or Egyptian accent by Sean Connery). Juan tells Connor that the both of them, as well as the Kurgan, are part of a group of people called the Immortals, who are more or less immortal as long as they don't get beheaded. Connor is apparently young enough that he hasn't learned any of this, while Juan is 2400 or so years old. It's the fate of the Immortals that the surviving ones are going to meet someplace distant in the future to have a fight to the death. Connor has to learn swordfighting so that Kurgan won't be the last Immortal remaining.
It's not too difficult to figure out what happens next. Back in 1985, New York is clearly going to be where all of the Immortals meet. But because one of them has just been killed in a very public way, the police are investigating the case and suspect Nash because of the way he drove out of the parking garage as though he was trying to get away. When forensics figures out that the dead man was decapitated by a sword, Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) is brought in to help investigate. Nash learns about her, and the two fall in love over their shared love of old swords (MacLeod as Nash is posing as an antiques dealer).
The problem, of course, is that Kurgan is still out there, and there's no way he's not finding out what MacLeod's alias is, leading to the final battle of good versus evil.
Highlander bombed at the box office, and it's not too difficult to see why. It's the sort of daft action film with constant flashbacks that is likely to put critics off. However, thanks to videotape, the movie was eventually able to find a cult audience that wanted an action movie that's pure dumb fun. And if you're in the right mood it certainly can be fun enough. Just don't expect anything close to classic movie-making.
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