Year:
2000
Studio:
Dimension Films
Movie:
2/5
DVD:
4/5
The original Highlander film
was not a great movie. But it somehow gathered a cult following and
enough popularity to do a sequel, which was pretty bad. Somewhat
deterred, they did a third movie, which was even worse than the sequel.
Meanwhile there was a television series that was successful enough to
run for six years and keep the franchise relatively strong. And there
was even a spin-off television series (Highlander:
The Raven) which, although had a concept I liked, ended up
sucking vacuum and only lasted a season.
With all that history and once the television series was over, they
decided to do a fourth Highlander movie, Highlander: Endgame. Throw out the
second and third movies. Combine elements from the original movie and
the television series. In the end I think it's a good movie for fans of
the franchise but not a good movie for most people.
The main hero is Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul), a Highlander.
Highlanders being immortals who go around for the most part trying to
kill each other in sword-fighting honor duels. You cut off an
immortal's head and gain his essence, his experience, knowledge, power.
It's all a big game that has been going on for centuries and the object
is to be the last one at which point you get an unspecified "prize".
So Duncan is from the television series. We also have Connor MacLeod
(Christopher Lambert) from the other movies. Connor is quite a bit
older than Duncan and acts somewhat like the mature older brother to
Duncan's wild intemperate youth (at least in the flashbacks). Connor
has had a rough life and everybody he loves seems to die rather
violently. Eventually he cracks and drops out of sight for 10 years.
Suddenly Connor turns up again. Apparently he was hiding at the
Sanctuary, a secret Watcher base. The Watchers being a sort of cult
that has been watching and recording the Highlander activitites for
hundreds of years and were mostly in the television series. The problem
is that if you are not familiar with the franchise, there are a lot of
things in this movie that go unsaid or are barely elaborated and it
left me kind of going "what the heck". The commentary track and
behind-the-scenes feature helped a lot.
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Back to the
story. Sanctuary was destroyed by Connor's nemesis, a new character
named Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne). In flashbacks we see that Connor killed
Jacob and his mentor in almost cold blood, though with amazingly
understandable cause. Jacob has since been after Connor making his life
miserable behind the scenes. Now he finally reveals himself and of
course neither MacLeod can stop him because Jacob is the
über-immortal, having 661 kills to his credit compared to 260 or
so for Connor and 170 or so for Duncan (the Watchers keep scorecards).
The main plot is both MacLeods having to stop Jacob. On another note,
Duncan's first (perhaps) wife, Kate (Lisa Barbuscia) shows up, working
for Jacob Kell. She hates Duncan because he betrayed her on their
wedding night. Yes, she's immortal though not a fighter. There's a good
redemption subplot there but it's not given enough time in my opinion,
since it is an action movie.
Those are the main elements. Highlander:
Endgame is a sprawling that tries to do too much on too little.
Obviously the budget was not much since they shot in Eastern Europe
which kind of shows. The special effects are at times kind of cheesy
and don't have the oomph of better SFX movies. In fact, for the most
part they're little better than the original movie it seems. The whole
movie has that "extended television episode" feel to it. It just
doesn't feel like the epic movie it is trying to be.
The actual 2-DVD set is much better. You get commentary by producers
Peter S David and William N Panzer, along with editor Robert A Ferretti
and co-executive producer H Daniel Gross. There is a 15-minute
featurette on the special effects, with the SFX people giving the
narrative. The second DVD has an editor's cut of the film. It's full of
temp music and special effects, but it has extra scenes and some things
are cut differently or longer or moved around a bit. Actually, the main
DVD version of the film is different than the theatrical version. They
said it has a different ending and some extra bits were added to make
it more cohesive. From their description, the DVD is a better movie
than the theatrical version. Finally we have a one-hour
behind-the-scenes featurette made from a couple of interview shows and
raw behind-the-scenes footage.
Overall the DVD is a must have for Highlander fans. For other people, I
think you really need to start with the original movie and the
television series (both on DVD I believe). Skip the two in between
movies and watch this one and then you'll enjoy much more than I did.
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