There's plenty that should be cut
Written: Jun 21 '00
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Sean Connery is in it.. not that he gives one of his best efforts, but he is Sean Connery
Cons: Lousy direction, lighting, sound quality, way too much Queen
|
|
|
| QueenLyssa's Full Review: Archived Movie Reviews |
I am a fantasy and sci-fi devotee. I commit heresy here by knocking the beloved and popular watermark of fantasy appreciation, but if this is a watermark it says something about the low demands of other fantasy fans.
The plot of Highlander, for the uninitiated, is interesting if simple. Some people don't die. They're immortals, only destroyed if their heads are cut off. There can be only one, and the last one left with his head on his shoulders will gain immense power. Because of this, they spend the centuries whopping each others' heads off with a variety of excellently made swords until the time of The Gathering, when this one will emerge from the final battle of the survivors.
There's much that could be done with such a story, but here it's buried in utter incompetence on the part of director Russell Mulcahy. Action is neatly obscured by darkness, rain, or smoke, and further kept from the viewer by camera angles that succeed in showing nothing more enlightening than occasional flashes of swords and combatant expressions that are hard to make out due to the previously stated obscuring factors. The dialogue is equally ruined by poor sound quality, when you can pick out the voices over the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is a whole new source of agony. I don't dislike Queen, but does it have to be all Queen all the time? Like Flash Gordon, if you're not a drooling Queen fan, after the third song you're dreading any more of it and it becomes yet another chore involved in enduring the film.
The acting just might be competent, although with the bad sound and lighting it's difficult to make a determination on it. Christopher Lambert's Connor MacLeod comes across as vaguely tortured, but perhaps he had some idea of what this film would look like and used it as inspiration. Sean Connery as always manages to be fascinating as Juan Ramirez, MacLeod's mentor and friend. Clancy Brown's Kurgan, the painfully obvious evil guy, is some version of Big Bad Guy That Likes Leather And Insults Women we've seen a million times before. The casting is a torture of failure, however. Yes, why not cast the Scot as a Spaniard, for no really provoking reason? Go for it, everything else in the movie is so messed up nobody will notice.
The characters never really manage to click or to draw in the viewer. A total lack of development beyond MacLeod losing his wife (well, she's not an immortal, so we knew she'd die eventually) makes them more than static. The plot is completely predictable and leaves one yawning. The special effects are something that might be passable for a student film, but hardly worthy of credit for a professional release.
The only reason I can think of for the huge following this film has attracted is that one comes away from it imagining how much could have been done with the premise, leading to roleplay and daydream improvements. Few films have given me such an empty feeling as Highlander managed.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
QueenLyssa
|
|
Member: Lyssa Jaraba
Location: Riverside, CA
Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
It's good to be queen.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.