Highlander (movie review)

• Title: Highlander
• Year: 1986
• Director: Russell Mulcahy
• Rating: R
• Cast: Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, Roxanne Hart

Immortal warriors battle through the centuries until only one remains. The story of one such warrior, Connor Macleod, a Scottish Highlander, is told both in contemporary New York and various historical periods.

Rewind . . .

. . . to me sitting in my uncle’s house flipping cable channels, looking for something to watch (must have been in the aftermath of  someone’s birthday party) and a movie I’d never heard of was coming on. I’m guessing I was twelve or thirteen, and Highlander was a year or so old. It came with this recommendation from my uncle: “It’s about guys that live forever, cutting each others heads off. It’s pretty good if you like violence.”

“I like violence,” I said, and the rest was history.

Despite opening with Queen and wrestling — two things my young self could not abide — and even though it revolved around the exploits of a weirdly-accented, sneaker-wearing protagonist, this movie had me hooked from the word go. Was the appeal, as my uncle so succinctly put it, the violence? Nope, not even close. It was the secret history. “From the dawn of time we came, battling down through the ages . . .” Here were a people apart, permanent outsiders in perpetual conflict, existing side by side with the boring old lot of us through the centuries — and, let’s not forget, cutting each others heads off. As a kid, I would have loved that kind of life; I would have, in fact, quite happily signed up for several centuries of decapitation shenanigans . . . always with the assumption, of course, that I would have been the biggest badass of them all.

I’d go so far as to say that Highlander is a twelve-year old boy’s fondest daydream put to celluloid, the ultimate in ego validation.

Highlander became a video store staple for me, a classic Friday night ‘staying up to 3:00AM in front of the TV’ movie. How many times did I pop in the grainy video tape to watch the clang-clang sword fights, give an enthusiastic cheer for the acre of awesome that is the Kurgan, or roll my eyes at the thin veneer of a love story? Or sing “B . . . A . . . L . . . A . . . N . . . C . . . E  . . . balance” with a peacocked-up Sean Connery, marvel at the breath-taking Scottish scenery on display, or groan at the vaguely disappointing  ‘prize’ that was some sort of touchy-feely stuff that had the effect of rendering Macleod mortal.

What a rip-off — I would have struck a deal with the Kurgan, and gone on for a least a few more centuries of penthouse living and consequence-free violence.

Fast Forward . . .

. . . through however many appalling sequels and series spin offs, the mainstream infiltration of the catch phrase “There can be only one,” and years of B-movie obscurity for Lambert (who still sounds funny). Emerge, too, from an era every bit the match of the seventies in the ugly hair and clothes department. Now, armed with a secondhand Tenth Anniversary Director’s Cut DVD, I fire up the old favorite for the first time since the, ahem, heady days of college.

The DVD itself doesn’t look like a great transfer, but I’m used to seeing it on video so it’s a step up. So much of this movie is at night, and the dark/light contrast gives the modern era segments almost a noirish feel. In fact, visually, this is an ambitious and stylishly done film even if clearly not a very expensive one, with the bright expanses of the Scottish highlands contrasting nicely with the dark, claustrophobic world of eighties New York.

The premise is nicely established in a shot that has an intensely still Macleod sitting amidst a sea of cheering wrestling fans. Here we have all we need — a man apart, oblivious to the banalities of the mortals around him as he concentrates on his age-old struggle. The next scene — a fight with a cut-and-thrust sword wielding fifty-something gymnast — has choreography that is quaint by today’s standards, but this lack of polish and perfection conversely makes it more believable. When the cars and sprinklers go haywire following Macleod’s victory, and the panning camera and soaring musical cue takes us from the dark garage to the green hills of the sixteenth century Scottish highlands in one smooth move, the movie has officially achieved lift-off.

So much of this film still works for me. Ignore the crudities of special effects (which are few) and bad make-up (a bit more plentiful) — the pace is there and so is the vision. Lambert’s somewhat flat presence actually seems to work to give Macleod a bit of a mysterious edge, and his character is the necessary still point between two big performances in the persons of Sean Connery and Clancy Brown. For years I’ve gotten the feeling that Connery has been phoning it in with his later performances, but his supporting role in Highlander has some real dimensionality and charm to it. Brown, in the coolest role he’ll ever likely have, exudes the giddy menace of a psychotic ten-year-old, and seems as intimidating a foil for Lambert now as he did then.

I don’t think the additions of the Director’s Cut really enhance the film, although I did rather like the revelations about the Rachel character. I had long assumed Rachel was perhaps an old lover of Macleod’s/Nash’s, and that the two had reached some sort of distancing accommodation. Turns out she was more like his daughter, rescued as a child from Nazis, and aware of Macleod’s immortality since day one. Fairly satisfying, but probably still best to lose the scene for pacing purposes, along with a rather pointless ‘break up’ scene at the zoo between Macleod and police forensics/metallurgist/damsel-in-distress Brenda Wyatt, played by the never-seen-again Roxanne Hart.

• Nostalgia Rating: Through The Roof (or Crashing Through the Skylight)
• Rewatch Potential: Moderate (Memorized)
• Wilhelm Scream?: No
• Verdict: Still the best movie about immortals cutting each others’ heads off you’re ever likely to see.

What I learned: What haggis is, and that it is “better to burn out, than to fade away.”

Top Marks: A giant Clancy Brown chewing up the scenery and having a hell of a good time as a baddie – the Kurgan surely is one of the best screen villains of all time.

If (When) It’s Remade: All characters will be wearing black leather, not just the Kurgan. Everybody will be kung-fu fighting through highly choreographed duels that will feel more like a night at the ballet than an actual fight. The victory ‘quickenings’ will look better thanks to CGI, the historical bits will be even less accurate, and the female lead more pneumatic. Connor Macleod will not have a french accent.

Final Thoughts: So, the idea was to cast Christopher Lambert as a Scotsman and Sean Connery as an . . . Egyptian? Right.

More Reviews of Highlander

This review is part of an ongoing series entitled Movies of a Misspent Youth, that looks at all the great fantasy, science fiction, and horror films available to the generation of kids growing up in the boom years of the 1980s. For more in this series, please visit my Film & TV page.