Viking Night: Highlander
By Bruce Hall
September 27, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
More specifically, as Connor McLeod of the clan McLeod, born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan in the highlands of Scotland, on the shores of Loch Shiel. Here, Connor lives in a beautiful one room grass and mud hut with his beautiful wife. The McLeods are a proud warrior tribe who have inhabited the Scottish Highlands since time immemorial and like most Highland tribes, they have more than a few enemies. Indeed, the primary drawback with the whole warrior lifestyle is that whole “war” thing - and it’s to this that Connor succumbs in 1536. If getting split in two with a broadsword wasn’t bad enough, he soon finds himself revived, somehow ageless and Immortal. This makes Connor a pariah, unable to return to his village and thus forced to roam the earth as an outcast.
Fast forward to 1986, where we find McLeod in the parking garage beneath Madison Square Garden. He’s locked in combat with another Immortal and they’re both swinging around a sword as long as a 12-year-old. McLeod prevails, decapitating his unfortunate adversary and then undergoing some kind of supernatural transformation which destroys most of the garage. This really is the thing I love best about movies. It’s hard to imagine now, but at some point I watched Highlander without having a clue what it was about, and at this point I have no doubt I was as confused as the first time I tried trigonometry. I still suck at math, but I’m absolutely down with fantasy. It’s the journey that makes it fun, and it’s what keeps me coming back.
But enough about me. The police apprehend McLeod as he flees the scene and somehow fail to connect him with the headless corpse inside. This, despite the fact that they caught him running, he styles himself an antique dealer and one of the weapons recovered was a five hundred year old sword worth one million dollars. What are the odds McLeod was involved? It’s more than enough to hold a guy for 24 hours even if you don’t charge him with anything, but they don’t. Seriously, if real cops were as stupid as movie cops, I’d have gotten out of the traffic ticket I was handed a few months ago by pretending to be invisible. It’s not logical but as Harrison Ford supposedly once said of Star Wars, “This ain’t that kind of movie.”
Ain’t that the truth. But such inconveniences are necessary to get to the meat of the story, and what a story it is...
After being banished from his village, something else extraordinary happens to Connor McLeod. Highlander is a film of contradictions, dodgy acting, massive plot holes and gaps in logic as wide as the Grand Canyon. So, if Connor McLeod is to be a Scotsman with a French accent, why stop there? Enter Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez (Sean Connery, collecting a paycheck just for being himself), a Spaniard with a Scottish accent. Despite this hilarious flaw, Sanchez is also an Immortal, and steeps his new friend in the lore of their shared predicament. Ramirez lays down the ground rules for being an Immortal, and there are more than a few of them. I won’t spoil the details for you except to say that the only way to kill an Immortal is to take their head, and the ultimate goal of each one is to do just that to the rest of them. In the end there can be only one, and the last Immortal standing will receive a fantastic Prize. I won’t spoil that either, except to say that it isn’t a new car, a refrigerator or a dining room set. It’s way cooler.
How anyone knows all of this and how it all started is never explained (until the sequel, which we do not speak of), but in my opinion to do so would only have weakened the film. Much like The Force (which was also later ruined), Immortality is a plot device best utilized as an exploration of character. As with most great science fiction, the origin of the challenge isn’t usually as important as how the character responds to it. And for a fantasy film, the most critical thing of all is to have a sound and compelling fundamental premise that is so kick ass, it can even overcome logic. In this regard Highlander knocks it out of the park. It’s just a terrific idea and despite a few notable speed bumps, Highlander delivers the goods.
In doing so, film jumps between past and the present using a series of well placed flashbacks, intended to show us how McLeod came to be the man he is today. How does he respond when over time, he outlives everything and everyone he loves? What does it feel like to befriend another Immortal and then deal with their loss when someone comes to take their head? How much fun must it be to have all the time in the world to experience everything life has to offer? And yet, what torture it surely is to be immune to death, but powerless to stop others from dying? Most of all - who wants to live forever when you have to spend eternity looking over your shoulder? These concepts form the essence of the film and are easily the most compelling thing about it.
Less compelling is the improbability that the Immortals somehow kept themselves a secret from the world until Connor’s fateful encounter beneath Madison Square. But were it not the case, we wouldn’t be able to give McLeod his obligatory Action Movie Love Interest. He is investigated by a typically intrepid female cop named Wyatt (Roxanne Hart), who conveniently happens to be an expert on the antique swords the Immortals use to fight one another. Yes, hers is a subplot you can see coming a mile away, it’s so immediately clear. So is the way everything comes to a head when McLeod’s centuries of training bring him face to face with Kurgan (Clancy Brown, just having a hell of a time), his arch nemesis and the most powerful of the Immortals. The symbolism in their struggle is obvious, even for a movie already so full of explicit symbolism.
But the movie is a lot of fun, and it does have a rather wry sense of humor. Without question the primary joy in Highlander is not in dissecting its finer points, but in just being along for the ride. On that account, the film dutifully goes through its paces as a standard revenge thriller – but with a truly fascinating celestial twist. There are few real surprises, save for the utterly sublime musical contributions by legendary rock band Queen. Past that, the people you expect to live manage to live, while the people you expect to die manage to die. But don’t be shocked if you find yourself wondering what it might be like to live forever, even if it means carrying around a four foot blade at all times. Kind of makes you wonder how Immortals might get around an airport, doesn’t it? A few terrible sequels and one fairly decent television series attempted to explore the subject further but when it comes to the Highlander franchise, my advice to you would be the words of Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez himself:
In the end, there can be only one.