More so than any of my other themes I find that I wind up talking about my experience with the movies during Awesome 80s in April rather than reviewing them. I grew up in the 1980s. I watched a lot of movies during that decade and continued to watch them on home video through the 1990s and beyond. More than any other decade I have watch movies from the 1980s.

I also remember hearing about a lot of the movies in the 1980s. I remember watching trailers growing up, or hearing about films from Siskel and Ebert, reading reviews in the local paper, etc. These things are implanted in my memory, even for movies I’ve never seen.

So when I watch the now, those memories linger. You’ll find that in these reviews I’ll spend a lot of time talking about watching them as a kid, or at least knowing about them in some way. Sometimes it will be just a memory of seeing the VHS cover a thousand times while browsing for something else to watch.

So it was with Highlander. I didn’t watch the film when it came out in 1986. I was too young. I didn’t watch it in high school or even college. But I was very aware of it. In this case I don’t remember watching trailers or hearing buzz about it as a kid. But later people talked about it being one of the great fantasy movies of all time.

When I finally did see it, probably twenty years ago or so, I was disappointed in it. I didn’t really like it and I didn’t understand why people loved it so.

Watching it again now I both understand the hype and my trepidation over it. It has a cool concept. Some great music. Some beautiful shots. A wonderfully ridiculous performance from Clancy Brown. But Christopher Lambert in the lead doesn’t work for me. The mythology isn’t fleshed out very well. And the staging of most of the action is just bad.

The Highlander is Connor MacLeod (Lambert) an immortal living a simple life as an antiques dealer in New York in 1985. Our film begins with him watching a wrestling match in Madison Square Garden. Bored, he leaves before the match is over only to be attacked by some rando in the parking garage. They fight with swords and MacLeod beheads the other dude.

Flashback to the Scottish Highlands in the 1500s and MacLeod is living a simple life as a farmer or whatever Scottish villagers were in the 1500s. His clan fights another clan. The Kurgan (Brown) is another immortal, but badass and evil. He’s fighting for the other clan. But really he just wants to kill MacLeod because when one immortal beheads the other he gains the dead guys powers or something.

Kurgan gives MacLeod a good stabbing but is unable to behead him. The thing is MacLeod at this time doesnt’ know he’s immortal. Nor do any of his clan. They have a funeral and everything. But then MacLeod wakes up, definitely not dead, and freaks everybody out.

He’s banished and eventually meets Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (Sean Connery) a good guy immortal who teaches McLeod in the immortal ways of living, fighting, and not dying.

There are a bunch of immortals on Earth and the only way to kill them is the beheading. Every once in a while these guys get a tingling and that means they gotta come together and try to kill each other. Someday there will be a great tingling and everybody will gather together and fight until the there is only one immortal standing. That guy will get all the power and become God or something. They very much like saying “There Can Be Only One” right before they try and kill each other. It is unclear why they need to kill each other. They don’t always as MacLeod and Ramírez become friends. And later MacLeod will hang out with another immortal and they definitely don’t try and kill each other. So maybe its just the evil guy who likes killing.

It is all kind of vague and nonsensical if you ask me. I don’t think the writers spent a lot of time working the details of the mythology out. There are sequels and a TV show so maybe it makes more sense later on.

The film moves back and forth between the 1980s where MacLeod has to fight the Kurgan again, but also makes a lady friend, and deals with the police over the decapitated dead guy from the garage, and the past where he gets all his training and stuff.

The film looks great. The Scottish scenery is stunningly beautiful and cinematographer Gerry Fisher gives the modern stuff a cool noirish feel with lots of shadows, backlighting, and fluid camera movement.

Christopher Lambert is stiff as MacLeod, never making me believe anything that happening to me. But Clancy Brown is clearly having a lot of fun while Sean Connery does his best Sean Connery. He’s playing an Egyptian who has been living as a Spaniard but he’s still got Connery’s very Scottish accent. I’ll take that over Lamber’s attempt at Scottish. In the modern scenes he’s doing something like German for some reason.

The fight scenes are poorly choreographed and terribly shot. It is hard to believe the same crew who creates such interesting images in all the other scenes managed to screw up the many fight scenes so badly. But here we are.

But that Queen soundtrack rocks.

So what we’re left with is an interesting mythology poorly told and some very pretty images. That’s enough to make me recommend it, but not enough to make me want to dive into the sequels.