Listening to Connery say Pendejo alone is fucking brilliant
It seemed to be a rule of the 80’s: If you’re making a hella-cheesy movie, get Queen to do the soundtrack. None of the songs are as good as “Flash Gordon”, but “Highlander” has its own awesomeness; spinning its own “Terminator”-like plot line of immortal warriors who battle through the centuries to protect mortal-kind. The final battle takes place in the present but alot of the best stuff in this movie takes place in the past. McCleod (Christopher Lambert) is banished from his Scottish clan once they discover he cannot die. In a stroke of tongue-in-cheek genius, the movie casts Sean Connery, not as a Scotsman, but as a 200-year-old Spainard (listening to Connery say “pendejo” is worthy of recommendation alone) who supplies us with exposition and is the Morpheus to MacLeod’s Neo in an excellently epic training montage. The Highlanders must battle to the death (basically getting their heads chopped off) until there can be only one and in true video game style, the winner becomes more powerful by absorbing the loser’s energy. Kurgan (Clancy Brown) is the strongest of all immortals and only need defeat MacLeod to bring pain to the mortal world. Lambert has a “fuck you” stare that lasts for days (which seems to cover a lot of his acting) while Brown dons all leather in the present (another nod to Terminator) and turns up the maniacal evilness to about an 11. Director Russell Mulcahy’s sword-clanging battle sequences never fail to be overblown astonishments (one literally brings lightning and the stone-house down) and while the jumps from past to present can get exhausting, the movie is not without quieter, more dramatic touches that move it along nicely. Not great, but certainly one of the more entertaining B-movies of the 80’s.
Grade: 3 out of 4
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