Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Highlander: Endgame

Movie Guru Rating:
Unconscious (1 out of 5)

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The Highlander series overstays its welcome. Again.

by Zak Weisfeld

Often, when I'm called to testify before Congress, I'm asked not only to describe what I do, but justify it—justify the millions of taxpayer dollars that are spent each year providing the public with expert information and advice on popular cinema. It is generally at this point in my testimony that I bring in my high-priced mouthpiece (which is where a lot of the taxpayer money goes) to talk about the multi-billion-dollar film industry, ballooning marketing budgets, the importance of a free press to a functioning democracy and the danger of our nation becoming the 400-pound, multi-media zombie-slaves of AOLTimeWarnerDisneyNewsCorp.

But there's another part of the job, a less glamorous one. One the bigwigs in Washington don't see, and wouldn't appreciate if they could. Like them, I'm sure most of you imagine the reviewer's life to be a non-stop whirl of private jets, five star hotels, international intrigue and long, wine-soaked dinners with Hollywood starlets. And it is. Most of the time. There is, however, a price to be paid, and that price is sometimes unconscionably high. This weekend, that price was Highlander: Endgame.

Like many other hunchbacked dateless teens, I discovered the first Highlander on video. And while I can't remember the exact surroundings in which I first drank its delightful blend of science-fiction, mythology, Christopher Lambert and decapitation, I'm almost certain it was around midnight on some grim Saturday when all hope was long gone. I was not the only one. Despite its foreign star and geek genre status, Highlander was an incredibly successful movie and its slogan, "There can be only one!" was its rallying cry. Oh, the irony.

Today, after some unknown and unspeakable number of sequels, and even a blatantly Canadian Highlander television show, Highlander has somehow clawed its way out of the late-night action hour and back onto the big screen. Why it has done so is a question worth asking. It certainly wasn't because there was a final great Highlander story just waiting to be told. Which can only mean that someone thought it would make money. Let us band together, dear readers, and see that it doesn't.

To help ensure that you aid me in my quest, I am now going to reveal everything that passes for plot or a plot twist in this garbled excuse for a movie. If, at some point, this abridged version ceases to make any sense whatsoever, then one of two things has happened. Either I've faithfully relayed the story of Highlander: Endgame, or just the attempt to recall the film has forced me back into my well-stocked medicine chest, even though I promised Sen. Thompson I was done with that stuff forever.

First the original Highlander, Connor McCloud, played by Christopher Lambert (looking less immortal day by day) gets his antique store blown up and a woman he cared about blown up with it. This causes him to go to some kind of monastery and sit in a chair, wear an unflattering metal hat and grow a beard. Meanwhile, Duncan McCloud, played by Adrian Paul, the television Highlander, is doing martial arts. At some point he gets a bad feeling. Around this same time the film flashes back to Lambert's days as an actual Highlander in Scotland where he kills the priest who had his mother killed for witchcraft and then stabs the priest's son.

At the end, or thereabouts, we learn that the son Lambert thought he killed was actually an immortal too, and that watching his dad get killed by Lambert really pissed him off, and so for the past 400 years or so he's been going around the world making Lambert's life miserable, thereby justifying Lambert's tired, dough-faced, immortal, Frenchy-type ennui. Which may or may not be why, at some point in Highlander, Adrian Paul kills Christopher Lambert. Even though they're best friends and Lambert taught Paul a devastating sword fighting move. The bad guy is supported by some kind of immortal Backstreet Boys. But he kills them too. Also, Adrian Paul has a girlfriend. Who is an immortal and also very thin, and with her own clothing line. No, seriously. And it turns out there are lots of immortals. Even though there was only one, lo these many years back.

Now if I can just get the child-proof cap off...ahhhhhh...

[Ed. note: The remainder of Mr. Weisfeld's review consisted of long series of random letters and numbers, along with snippets of poetry by Robert Burns and the second verse of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."]