Sean Connery does for Highlander what he did for The Avengers: He makes a few minutes of an otherwise monumentally mediocre movie sparkle.
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Sean Connery does for "Highlander" what he did for "The Avengers": He makes a few minutes of an otherwise monumentally mediocre movie sparkle. Without him "Highlander" has to be one of the most witless fantasy adventures of all time. Still, it spawned several sequels and engendered a whole TV series! Maybe it was the sheer audacity of the film's silliness that made it so popular or the brief, swaggering presence of Connery. Whatever, it's now available in all its glory on a special edition DVD, with enough things beyond the movie to make a person forget for a moment the story line's lack of logic and coherence.
The story opens at a wrestling match in Madison Square Garden where the hero, Conner MacLeod (played by Christopher Lambert), has visions of his Scottish homeland centuries before. We don't yet know he is an Immortal, chasing around the world for ages with other Immortals, battling each other for the final "prize," which apparently will save all mankind. Or something.
In the next scene, which sets the tone for the rest of the film, he's in the Garden's underground garage when he is beset by a figure in a trench coat, wielding a broadsword. MacLeod whips out his own four-foot blade, something he always seems to carry with him, especially to wrestling matches, and they fight in dizzying quick shots around the parked cars for what seems like forever, without for a moment attracting attention to themselves. MacLeod wins, of course, and cuts off the guy's head, an incident that will later displease the local police but immediately sets into motion a minor electrical storm that starts the ignitions of every car in the area. And so on.
Shortly afterwards, in another flashback we see him almost killed in an ancient clan war. When he miraculously survives, his loving friends and family think he is possessed of the devil and beat the tar out of him. Thus, he becomes an Immortal, with no more explanation than that.
Connery plays a flamboyant Spanish nobleman, another Immortal, who becomes MacLeod's mentor. His appearance doesn't last more than a few minutes but energizes the screen. When he's out of the story, it's business as usual and back to hack and slash.
The film's single biggest failing, in any case, is director Russell Mulcahy's uncanny ability to make the most potentially thrilling scenes dull and lifeless: Fights, wars, chases, you name it. Even a gratuitous bit near the end where the villain, Kurgan, played by Clancy Brown, drives recklessly through traffic playing chicken with oncoming cars is in no way menacing or exciting, only tedious and long.
The film's one good line comes in the climactic showdown when the heroine saves MacLeod's life and MacLeod says to her, "What kept you?" It's not much, but it made me smile in a film that, Connery apart, takes itself much too seriously.
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