Highlander:Endgame

Starring Christopher Lambert, Adrian Paul, Bruce Payne, Jim Byrnes and a special appearance by WWF Super-Star Edge. Written by Eric Bernt, Gillian Horvath & Bill Panzer, based on characters created by Gregory Widen. Directed by Douglas Aarniokoski.

This film is both a sequel to the original Highlander (nicely ignoring both the second AND third Highlander films), and the television series that starred Adrian Paul and ran for six seasons in syndication. It wraps up the loose threads of the show, and paves the way for a new franchise of Highlander films, but seeing is this film did really poorly at the box-office (it took in a TOTAL of $12 million, with a budget of $15 million), I wouldn’t count on it.

The whole concept of the Highlander universe is that there is a secret society of immortal beings that live among us, and are drawn together to fight each other to the death. The only way an immortal can die is to have their head lopped off, which causes the victims life essence to flow into the killer, a process known as the quickening. Of course, "In the end, there can be only one." Problem is, at the end of the first movie, there WAS only one, but that’s been ignored since the first movie, and never explained.

Adrian Paul reprises his TV role, as Duncan MacLeod, the cousin of the original immortal Highlander, Conner MacLeod (Christopher Lambert). Duncan is called back to the fight when he thinks that Conner has been killed by the evil priest Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne). Kell has haunted Conner since the middle-ages, and is pissed at him for killing his father figure. Blah blah blah, there can be only one. Conner isn’t dead, but he soon actually is dead, and there’s a big sword fight in the end, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Conner, who has his head lopped off.

I loved the first Highlander film, I still watch it somewhat regularly. The second Highlander movie sucked, and the third one was barely watchable. The TV series though, was always pretty good, if you got over the fact that at the end of the first movie there really was only one immortal, a fact they ignored in the TV series. This thing, though, YUCK! Oh, they tried, I can tell, but it still plays like a really LONG episode of the TV series, only with more blood and better special effects. They try to solve continuity problems, but they fail miserably. It’s still better than the second Highlander movie though.

Unless you’re a REALLY big fan of the TV series, don’t bother, as you’ll be incredibly confused, like my girlfriend was, and it’s too difficult (not to mention painful) to try to explain all the continuity problems.

My rating ** out of 5.