Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Highlander II: The Quickening (1991)

no stars out of * * * * *

There are bad movies that are so bad they become enjoyable for all their faults, and there are bad movies so bad that the enjoyment one could get from bad story, bad acting and bad direction is shattered within the first minutes. Highlander II: The Quickening broke every record in the latter category. For me, watching this movie was certainly not a barrel of laughs. In fact, it was such a painful experience that when the movie was over I was somewhat depressed (hence the title "So bad, I had to go on medication" of my bottom 10 movies of the 90s).

Everybody during the course of his life has used hyperboles in speeches or writings, and everybody who encounters an hyperbole knows that it is simply an exaggeration used to emphasize a certain aspect of reality. The classic one used by film fans is the notorious phrase disgrace to the film industry. You would not think it is actually possible for a film to be that bad: many of the people who read or hear this sentence know it is a way to trash a movie beyond its actual faults. Well, let me put this clear: Highlander II: The Quickening is a real disgrace to the film industry.

One of the reasons of this is that Highlander II: The Quickening took an enjoyable if not promising story, and for a quick buck it destroyed it shamelessly, replacing it with one of the most incoherent and stupid things ever seen onscreen. In fact, ever seen anywhere. To add insult to injury, the new story did not even make any sense at all when taken on its own.

When this movie came out I was not a hardcore fan of the first Highlander, but I had indeed enjoyed it and I had it on tape. Highlander was a good action/fantasy with a bittersweet mood and scenes that also managed to be a little touching. The first movie narrated the story of Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert), a man born in the 16th Century in Scotland, who during a battle was stabbed to death, only to discover that he was not able to die like ordinary people. Accused of using black magic and banished from his town, he was found by another immortal who had been around for many centuries already, Ramirez (Sean Connery). Ramirez taught him about the dozens of immortals hidden between ordinary men, about how the immortals were fighting each other, and about a mysterious "prize" that the last remaining immortal would get. The first movie ends with Connor winning the final fight, getting the prize and becoming mortal. So far so good, nothing extraordinary, but the movie managed to give us some poetic images of Connor's sadness of watching the people he loved getting old and die before his eyes.

This is where Highlander II: The Quickening comes in and drives me to delete my Highlander tape as quick as possible. The movie starts with some kind of futuristic images of a huge sky shield which people, apparently, used for at least twenty years to protect themselves from the sun (they live 20 years without the sun?) after the ozone layer disappeared. Then the movie switches to a now-old MacLeod watching some singer in an Opera theater: a good occasion for Lambert to do a laughably bad old man impression. Then we get to know that the shield company is evil, because they won't shut it off even though the ozone has "repaired itself".

Sigh. That was the highlight.

Where to start?

a. We discover that the immortal are aliens banished from planet Zeist (?) for political reasons (noise of my jaw hitting the floor). What about Connor's family on Earth, we saw them in the first movie... was he adopted? As an adult? Or was he some kind of illiberal child? What kind of incredibly-human-looking aliens are these? Is the movie ripping off Superman or what?

b. They tell us that the immortals are immortal here on Earth, but they are mortal on their own planet, and now Connor has to defeat his long-time enemy on planet Zeist, Katana (what a ridiculous name), played by Michael Ironside. No explanation of how this is possible: Connor has been on Earth at least since the 16th century, so how is his enemy on Zeist still alive after all these centuries (noise of objects being thrown at the screen)?

c. Ramirez and Connor were friends on planet Zeist (noise of people hanging themselves). How the hell can that be? In the first one they had never met each other until the 16th century, and Ramirez had been around for many centuries already! When did they exactly get on Earth? And if Ramirez really came on Earth many centuries before Connor, how is it possible that Connor knew him on Zeist and he's still alive, since they just told us they are mortal on that damn planet! And what about when they met each other and they didn't know they had met before... and what about the fact that Connor did not know he was immortal until he got killed in battle? What kind of short memory do these aliens have?

d. So in the first one we got that MacLeod gained mortality again, and now we understand that once he won the prize he had to go back to Zeist to fight Katana (who is still alive and young after all these centuries, for some reason we'll never know). What the hell was Connor waiting for? He looks like has like two weeks worth of life right now. How is it that he seems to forget everything? What kind of pathetic hero is he?

e. Great plot development here: it seems that Katana still wants to get rid of MacLeod (gosh, these aliens sure are bitter -- 500 years have gone by and they still are mad at each other for political reasons) so he sends two laughably goofy killers on Earth for the job. Couldn't he wait, since it seems like MacLeod is going to be dead next week? And of course, when the two killers get on Earth, MacLeod suddenly becomes young again. You know, that happened to me one time: I went to see my grandmother, and as soon as I set the foot off my car in her town, *poof*, she was 25 again.

f. After wasting the two killers in an inane sword-fighting scene, MacLeod sees a girl he had met twenty minutes before (when he was still old) coming out of a dumpster (for some incredible coincidence, she is also the leader of the environmentalists who want to shut off the shield). The two go ahead and frantically kiss each other. Great. What can you do, I mean... you get out of a dumpster, you see a guy who is eighty one minute and thirty-five the next, and who has just decapitated two goofballs, you have to have sex with him. Casanova is rolling in his grave.

g. And Ramirez is back. For what? We'll never know. How? We'll never know either. Apparently, since he died in the 16th century in the first film, now he is not able to understand modern technology like cars and stuff. Too bad on Zeist all the aliens-immortals had technology which seemed really advanced before they came on Earth, and that was centuries ago. I guess Ramirez forgets everything just like MacLeod, after all.

h. Katana is pi**ed off because his killers failed, so he comes on Earth to do the job himself. As he gets on Earth, he mutters the words "This sure doesn't look like Kansas, does it"... Kansas what? Is there Kansas on Zeist too? What is he talking about? No idea. Then he proceeds to drive a subway train like a maniac, and to break the rule of physics too since apparently (let me emphasize this) people inside the train cars are being thrown screaming in the back despite the fact that the train is absolutely not accelerating enough to accomplish anything like that: I guess the film makers thought that speed, not acceleration, is what made people fall. Galileo is rolling in his grave.

i. Now the movie gets a little bit more confusing (not kidding), as apparently Katana wants to partner up with the company who maintains the shield, for no reason other than because the two are supposed to be both evil. After various sequences of nonsense, thanks to another goofy scene Ramirez dies again to keep some kind of big fan from cutting your heroes ('cause certainly these are not my heroes) into pieces... why was a room like this ever built? Oh, I get it: because Connery deserves a horrible death for appearing in this crapfest. Such metaphores.

j. After more onscreen garbage, we finally get to the predictable but incompetently done fight between Katana and MacLeod, where of course MacLeod has to mumble the usual words "there can be only one" (no dummy, it's "there should have been only one"), before everything explodes, shield and all, and everything is fine (not).

Pant, pant. Believe me, I skipped soooo much of the goofs and the nonsense that permeates this story. A whole book could be written about everything that is wrong with it. This is the kind of movie that makes Battlefield Earth look like good cinema.

But let's see a little bit of the rest, apart from the abysmal story: the acting? Appalling. Lambert was ok in the first one, but for some reason he is back as a non-acting entity. Sean Connery is not much better, but at least he has not much screen time. Michael Ironside resorts to chewing scenery all the time. And let's just forget about Virginia Madsen as Connor's love "uninterest".

The mood is so removed from the first one, it's not even funny. First of all, this is sci-fi, not fantasy at all. The reasons behind the immortality did not need any explanation: they were simply part of the mistery, and had a fascinating aura in that. They certainly didn't need an explanation this silly, which doesn't even make any sense in terms of coherence.

The imagery is a rip-off of Blade Runner, and an awful one at that. There are two action sequences in the whole movie, and they are vastly inferior to all the ones appearing in the first installment. There are continuity errors, such as swords switching from long, to short, to long again.

The music is mostly appalling synthetic rock music, the only decent ones being simple rehashes of the ones used in the first Highlander.

I can't think of any reasons why you might want to see this movie, apart from mocking it. Then again, it is probably too awful for that too. It does not fall in the "so bad it's good" category. It's more like in the "so bad, it SUCKS" category.



Recommended: No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12