(1986)
Dir: Russell Mulcahy
Highlander is elegant in its simplicity. A group of sword wielding lunatics have been gifted with immortality, or cursed with it. It depends on your point of view, I suppose.
The reason for all this immortality business is wisely never revealed to us. It could be any number of things really. Perhaps it is God’s doing. Or maybe they’re fallen angels, or exiled aliens. The whole thing might be because they’re magic. Or I don’t know because they’re ubermensh.
Highlander 2 settled on the whole exiled alien story. Making it a bit like Scientology really. Highlander by contrast is kept uncluttered of such concerns. The immortal life is shown to be a bit of a curse for Connor and Ramirez but at least the Kurgan seems to get a kick out of it.
Anyway, the immortals are all inexorably drawn, or so we are told by Sean Connery, towards lobbing each other’s heads off the first chance they get and that’s about as much of a plot as we’re ever given. The admittedly now clunky looking sword fights are to gain something enigmatically named ‘the prize’; a power that is so extraordinary that if in the wrong hands could spell DOOM in big capital letters for all mankind.
‘The prize’ throughout is inferred to be something otherworldly and so this big reveal will be something mind-bustlingly awesome right?. Well no, not really. To be honest it might as well be called ‘the MacGuffin’, because as it happens ‘the prize’ is that he can draw on the shared thoughts of all mankind (God-like power – pretty good) and then also his balls start functioning and so he can have children at last. The mortal life is lived and then of course he can finally die. (Did he have a choice in any of this though? Like maybe he could pick and mix his prizes out of the supernatural goody bag? I guess we’ll never know).
Anyway, it’s not exactly the sanest ending ever. Though what do you expect from the film that casts Sean Connery as the chief metallurgist to the king of Spain? You’ve got the greatest living Scotsman and you do this to him:
Come on!
Yet somehow, despite all this, Highlander still works. It’s one of those quintessential 80s movies. In this case coming complete with a classic kick ass Queen soundtrack.
*** 3/4 / *****
