Highlander

We've had a lot of good posters so far.
This is not one of them.

Highlander (1986)
Dir. by Russell Mulcahy

Starring Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown, Roxanne Hart and Sean Connery

[content warning: whitewashing]

Plot:

After recovering from being run through during a battle, Scottish clansman Connor MacLeod discovers that he is an Immortal, and can only be killed by having his head cut off. After receiving training from a fellow Immortal, he learns about the Gathering, a time in the future when all surviving Immortals will come together and duel until only one is left. Four hundred years later, the Gathering begins in New York City, and MacLeod must finally face off against the Kurgan, the Immortal who impaled him in his first battle centuries ago.

Nostalgia:

Probably my first exposure to the Highlander franchise was my father watching Highlander 2 on VHS when I was about 10 or so. I distinctly remember it because I liked the cool sword fights, but had absolutely no idea what was going on – a feeling that’s actually pretty common for that movie, as it turns out. I probably saw the original for the first time some time around 1994 or so, as I remember watching it on the tiny tube TV that I had in my bedroom, and that’s when I got it. I never did watch the TV show, but it was pretty popular among the Sci-Fi House denizens in college, judging by how often it was included in the weekly viewing lineup.

Review:

This is a case of a movie with a really great premise, in search of better filmmakers to produce it. The plot is made of pure B and cult movie gold: immortal warriors from various time periods and places hacking each other to bits in modern day New York. That it spawned three further theatrical releases, two direct-to-DVD entries and three TV series is testament to the awesomeness of the idea. It’s just a shame that the film is as messy and unfocused as it is.

French actor Christopher Lambert is simultaneously horrendously miscast and kind of perfect for the title role of Connor MacLeod. At no point did I ever buy him as Scottish, but I did buy him as someone who had lived in many different parts of the world, seen the horrors of war over and over, and would really just prefer to settle down and run his antique store in peace. In all of the scenes set in New York, he has this world-weary warrior vibe, like Hugh Jackman from Logan with a katana instead of claws. If the majority of the movie had been in present-day, I don’t think it would have been much of an issue.

Unfortunately, however, the first half of the movie is spent cutting back in forth, quite frequently, between Connor in the present and in 16th century Scotland. I found this story structure to be way more jarring than I remembered it to be. In fact, my memory of the movie seems to have recut the movie mostly in chronological order, with all of the Scottish sequences being together in a big chuck immediately after the initial fight in the parking lot. While the cutting back and forth prolongs the mystery of just what the heck is going on, it also makes it a lot harder to really get in a groove with the movie’s story-telling.

It also doesn’t help matters that the one major actor who actually has a Scottish accent, Sean Connery, was cast as MacLeod’s most definitely not Scottish mentor. Though MacLeod refers to him as a Spaniard, and he introduces himself with the rather awesome name of Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez, Connery’s character claims to be a two thousand year old Immortal from ancient Egypt. I really wish they’d have left it with him being an actual Spaniard, as A) Connery’s accent is about equally Spanish as Lambert’s is Scottish, so at least it would be consistent, and B) then I wouldn’t have to complain once again about Hollywood whitewashing. I’m not 100% sure what an actual pre-Ptolemaic Egyptian would have looked like, but I’m pretty positive it’s nowhere near as white as Sean Connery is.

While most of the casting and behind-the-camera decisions were definitely a mixed bag, there was at least one certified home run: Clancy Brown, as the villainous Kurgan. I find him absolutely perfect in the role of an immortal mass murderer, both in his D&D bad guy armor when he first appears, and his more punk rock look in the modern setting. This was the first thing I ever saw the veteran character actor in, though I probably heard that distinctive voice in Gargoyles or other animated voice-over roles. I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for him ever since, even though he’s frequently typecast in Kurgan-esque parts.

Another thing that totally works, and which might actually be the best thing to come out of the movie, is the soundtrack by Queen. They wrote several songs specifically for the movie, including now-classics “Princes of the Universe” and “Who Wants to Live Forever.” The former is so associated with the franchise that it was also used as the theme song to the TV show spinoff, which I was surprised to learn ran a whopping six seasons and 119 episodes when I looked it up just now. “Who Wants to Live Forever” also takes on a special poignancy, knowing that Freddie Mercury would be diagnosed with AIDS less than a year later. 

Highlander is very much a mixed bag, an excellent premise surrounded by some shoddy casting and filmmaking. Though the franchise would continue for well over a decade after, it would eventually peter out in the mid 2000s. It’s definitely one that I could see being remade or rebooted successfully, especially given the current wave of 80s nostalgia.

Nostalgia: B+
Rewatch: C+

Stray Thoughts:

-I don’t know if it was just the transfer on the cheap 4-in-1 franchise DVD I borrowed from my brother, but the version I watched was extremely washed out and grainy, like it was on a VHS that had been copied a couple of times. I’m not going to dock it any points, though, as I don’t have a point of comparison to see if it was like that when it originally came out or not.

-The Kurgan assembles his sword like an assassin would a sniper rifle, by assembling it from multiple pieces. That includes the blade, which I’m pretty sure would break on impact if you tried something like that in real life.

-MacLeod’s sword is identified as both being a 1500-year-old katana, and being a Masamune (a detail I never caught before). Masamune was an actual Japanese swordsmith, renowned as the best ever, and many of his surviving blades are held as Japanese national treasures. However, he lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, a tad bit later than the sword was supposedly dated to.

Undercover Blues

Undercover Blues (1993)

Dir. by Herbert Ross

Starring Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid, Fiona Shaw and Stanley Tucci

[content warning: brief mention of whitewashing, panic attacks]

Plot:

Two married government agents, Jeff and Jane Blue, who are on maternity leave in New Orleans, are persuaded into helping recover a stolen shipment of powerful plastic explosives.  They have to juggle their mission as secret agents with caring for their baby and dodging the attentions of both the New Orleans police and a small-time mugger with a vendetta against them.

Nostalgia:

I can’t recall the first time that I saw this movie.  It didn’t come out until I was 11, so it had to have been some time during middle or high school.  But I’d seen it enough times that when I visited New Orleans for the first time in 2013 I was able to walk around the French Quarter picking out places that they’d used as shooting locations.  Haven’t seen it since I rewatched it right after getting home from that trip, however.

Rewatch:

This movie came and went pretty quickly in 1993.  It got horrible reviews and sank like a stone at the box office, only making $12 million on a budget of twice that.  It also marked the end of Kathleen Turner’s run as a box office lead actress, as she’d be diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis shortly after filming it and would swiftly step back to only supporting roles and voice work.  So why do I like this movie so much?

It think it has to do with how light and breezy it is.  The movie never really takes itself too seriously, and is often deliberately campy.  The Blues always seem to be one step ahead of everyone, including the villains, and are clearly having a blast while running circles around their opponents.  It’s an easy, watchable, low-stress movie, perfect for putting on in the background on a lazy Saturday (or, in my case with this rewatch, while attempting to calm down from an anxiety attack).  It was never going to win any awards, but I don’t understand some of the vitriol aimed at it from reviewers (one of which even suggested to buy tickets and give them to all of your enemies.  Ouch).

Special mention has to go to Stanley Tucci, as an ineffectual mugger that gets beat up by Jeff Blue early in the film, and spends the rest of the movie bumbling through one revenge attempt after another.  This wasn’t my first exposure to Tucci (that would have been Beethoven, though I don’t actually remember him from that movie at all), but it’s the first one to really stick in my memory.  A lot of the camp in Undercover Blues comes courtesy of his “Muerte”, who seems to exist solely to get beat up, tied up, dropped overboard, thrown out windows, and tossed into alligator pits, all accompanied by high-pitched shrieks.  Tucci has long been one of my favorite character actors, and that love really begins here.  To say he’s “good” in the role would be stretching things, but he’s definitely one of the most memorable things about the movie, and a couple of his quotes have become running gags around my family.

This is another movie in this rewatch series that I could definitely see being remade successfully if a little more attention was paid to fleshing out the characters a bit.  As it is, pretty much every character is a one-note type: the two cops that are assigned to the Blues are “blowhard hardass” and “cheerful, ambiguously gay”, the henchmen are either “nervous and over their heads” or “calm and business-like”, and the lead villain (Mrs. Dursley herself, Fiona Shaw), is “affably evil”, with a terrible East European accent.  All of the actors involved are definitely giving it their all, however, and a lot of the roles are played by veteran character actors.  In addition to the previously-mentioned Tucci and Shaw, there’s also Larry Miller, Tom Arnold, Park Overall, Obba Babatunde, Saul Rubinek, Olek Krupa, and a blink-and-you-miss-him Dave Chappelle, in his first film role as Muerte’s mugger-in-training.

So is it a great movie?  No, no it is not.  But I still have a lot of nostalgia for it, and there’s worse ways to waste 90 minutes on the weekend.

Nostalgia: A-

Rewatch: Realistically C+, but it’s more of a B-/B to me personally, even now

Stray thoughts:

-There’s a lot of seconds about this review.  It’s the second movie for both Dennis Quaid (Innerspace) and Kathleen Turner (Romancing the Stone), that I’ve done, and the second spy movie (Remo Williams). 

-The movie was originally titled “Cloak and Diapers.”  I actually think that gives a more accurate impression of the movie, and I wish they’d stuck with it.

-A semi-frequent trope in spy/cop comedies is a “creative” reading of someone’s Miranda rights.  This movie has probably my favorite one:

• Blue (pretending to arrest a bad guy informant): FBI! You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right you may talk, sing, dance, impersonate Elvis or anything else you like. You have the right to an attorney. If you're broke and can't afford one, tough shit! Now get in the car you suspected felon you!
• Informant: Wait, wait. What am I being charged with?
• Jeff Blue (in an exaggerated Texas drawl): That's for me to know and you to find out.

-I’d known that Dave Chappelle was in this for about thirty seconds, but I hadn’t realized until now that the government agent that gives them their mission is none other than Richard Jenkins.  He didn’t really become well-known until a decade after this, and I still wasn’t all that familiar with him the last time I saw this in 2013, so it never clicked until now.

-Muerte might technically be another case of whitewashing, with an Italian-American actor playing a character with a Spanish name and accent.  However, it’s pretty clear that “Muerte” isn’t his real name, and the accent is exaggerated enough to lead me to believe that it’s an in-character affectation, so I’m not sure if it counts.