Highlander is one of my favourite movies. But I’ll be the first to admit it’s a rather flawed movie at times. The biggest issue is the scene where the Kurgen and Ramirez go at it at Connor’s house and cause it to explode. But other than that, it’s a top notch 80′s action movie with some cool sword play, great mythology, and a rocking Queen soundtrack.
For those not familiar, Highlander is the story of an immortal, Connor MacLeod, who goes through the centuries finding other immortals and takes their heads; and with it their powers. The goal is for there to be only one and achieve The Prize. The immortal villain, The Kurgen, slices through heads to make sure he is the last immortal so he can rule mortal men, with only Connor as the one who can stop him.
Now even though they are immortal, they can still “die”. If they get shot, or fall off a cliff, they die, but then wake up a few hours later. In fact, their immortality cannot even start until they die the first time.
The caveat is in order to take another man’s head, the person must be alive. So it’s not like you can “kill” them and slice off their heads before they wake up. I mean, you COULD, but then you wouldn’t get their powers and experience the Quickening. But whose to say you couldn’t give them a few good crippling, non-lethal, shots with a gun, and have them bleed all over the place while you calmly sliced their heads off? Sure, there is no honor in that at all, and I’m sure there must have been at least one episode of the tv series that had a villain knock off an immortal or two in that fashion.
(Actually, now that I think of it, that’s similar to what happened at the beginning of Highlander 4)
So despite all that, the Kurgen, as retched as a villain as he was, did have a sense of honor when it came to fighting. He even gave Connor a somewhat headless salute at the very end.
I saw this movie for the first time late 2010, It was also the first I heard Queen. That was a pretty kick ass day.
Sweet! Queen really did pull that movie together.
On the TV series with Duncan MacLeod they touched on this. There is a group known as the Watchers whose job it is to hide and record each fights winner to know when the final fight is going to happen. They also make sure to keep the fights fair so when one “Immortal” cheats they equalize the fight.
I’m somewhat familiar with the show, and do remember the Watchers keeping tabs on the immortals. I think Highlander 4 even had the main Watcher pull out a laptop and show Duncan his score. I’ll admit to thinking it was a little silly to have a group of men keep track of the immortals for all those centuries. Well, maybe not silly, but poorly executed in the series.
I didn’t know they made sure they kept the fights “fair”. How do you mean equalize the fights? Like if an immortal “cheated”, they would kill him off themselves?
I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea of having non-immortal interfere in this supposed secret war that is happening right under our noses. It takes some of the mystery out of the mythology in my opinion. One of my favourite lines from Highlander is when Connor says “It’s a kind of magic”. They didn’t explain why they were immortal, or even question it very much. It was simply… a kind of magic.
I honestly don’t remember if they just shot the cheating immortal till they both came back around and removed the weapons, or if they captured them and took them away to the Sanctuary where they kept immortals imprisoned. It was a really long time ago though, I could be way off base.
Interesting. Never heard of the Sanctuary. I guess some parts of the TV show mythology might have been interesting. But I just couldn’t really get into it.
Using guns may not be as visually appealing as a sword fight, but it gets the job done!
Not against the immortals. Unless you cheat like one.
There is nothing better in cinema than Christopher Lambert’s underwater laughing. Except maybe that part where he says “Why? You cruising for a piece of ass?” Oh, and the thing where he opens the wine bottle and starts talking about the year of the vintage and what he was doing. I like to do that when I open a new bottle of Diet Coke.
Connor was a bit a bad ass in that unexpected way. He was private, smart, resourceful, and down right cynical with people. But after 400 years you probably couldn’t help but be annoyed with mortals, with the exception being Rachael, and this girlfriend… what’s her name the cop.
I should watch this when I get home from work. I never have and now feel the need to remedy that.
It also just occurred to me that Frumps do not have kneecaps to shoot.
Highlander is a pretty good movie for what it is. Like I said, it has some issues, mostly with the way Connor’s castle goes exploding all over the place during the Kurgen/Ramirez fight. But if you’re willing the left that slide, then yeah, enjoy. It’s a good movie that got tainted with all those sequels, and tv series.
Make me haggis!
Shut up. Fired.
LOVE Highlander!
I always thought the Kurgen was one of the all time best movie villains.
I agree. He was a downright evil sonnova bitch, who would kill and rape all without batting an eyelash, but he respected the fight and the rules of the immortals. Definitely makes for an interesting character.