I wasn’t planning on ever watching another Highlander movie. The first one was rather meh, more interesting in concept than in execution. There were a couple good things about, but most of that was the soundtrack by Queen and Clancy Brown’s over-the-top performance. I knew the second one largely by its reputation.
But I had some co-workers who, upon learning I saw the first one, insisted I see the second if I found it on a streaming service just to see how out-there it was. Well, both the first and second movies were included on Tubi, I’m sheltering in place, so why not?
I get the feeling the phrase “so, why not?”could explain so much about this movie. The first one had a decent mythology in place, something that had some clear rules as we flash back and forth between the past and present for Connor MacLeod as he learns the ropes of being an immortal and what that means when, in the end, there can be only one. Much of the problems I saw with the original Highlander was more a so-so presentation than anything else.
Well, then someone came along and said what the world of Highlander needed was aliens, time travel, and actions involving underground trains that probably violate the laws of physics.
Yes, it seems that Scottish Highlander Connor MacLeod (French Christopher Lambert) and sort-of Spanish or Egyptian or something Ramirez (Scottish Sean Connery) are, in fact, aliens. Ramirez had advised a rebellion on a distant planet, handpicking the inexperienced Connor to lead it for…reasons, and after they lost to the forces of General Katana (Michael Ironside), they were deported through time and space to Earth where they would live long lives, dying only through decapitation, and eventually there would be only one.
So, wait, did Connor forget he was immortal?
Now, all that crazy comes in within the first twenty minutes or so as Connor, now an old man with a raspy voice in the far distant year of 2024, remembers all this while watching a Wagner opera. Before too long, Connor is immortal again, that somehow wins the heart of activist Virginia Madsen, and he even brings Ramirez back to life in a literal flash of lightning from the other side of the planet.
If there’s anything fun about the movie, it’s watching Connery almost have fun in a fish-out-of-water scene when Ramirez materializes in the middle of a stage production of Hamlet and tries to engage the star of the show in conversation before realizing he has an audience. Likewise, it is almost fun seeing Ironside and John C. McGinley chew scenery as the movie’s antagonists. But the key words there are “if” and “almost”. The movie just goes deep on crazy, but if the first movie was bland, this one was just incompetent. Nothing about this movie really works. It would be one thing if the film chucked large chunks of the previous movie’s mythology and was somehow better for it. But it isn’t. It’s just bad all over.
Heck, the Queen songs are here played as background instrumentals as opposed to hearing Freddie Mercury sing them.
Really, I think I know why the franchise decided to just ignore this one.
Grade: F
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