Highlander: The Source

April 18, 2008

Rated: R Runtime: 86 min Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

I knew Highlander, sir, and you’re no Highlander!

Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

In 1986 there was a movie called HIGHLANDER starring Christopher Lambert as Connor MacLeod. It involved guys who were “Immortals”, existing down the centuries, who could only be killed by decapitation. If one killed another, he’d get more power, leading to some legendary final battle where the last two vied for a rather vaguely defined The Prize, which seemed to be mainly a burst of movie special effects. All this was window dressing for a neat concept: Dudes having swordfights hundreds of years ago in flashback, and current day in parking garages. One of these Immortals was Scottish, thus, The Highlander.

Then there was HIGHLANDER 2 (1991), a movie so incomprehensible that there are fans of the first movie who will tell you, earnestly, “There WAS no movie called HIGHLANDER 2“, hoping to induce hysterical amnesia.

Then came a 1992 TV series, which, after a rocky first season, became a fairly good show and ran until 1998, six seasons (and even had a short-lived spinoff). Adrian Paul was Another Highlander, Duncan MacLeod (”Same clan, different vintage.”).

HIGHLANDER III (1993) ignored the second film, and for that matter parts of the first film, and the TV series. But, all in all, it wasn’t a bad movie, just not very necessary. Essentially a remake of the first movie.

In 2000, there was HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME, a fourth movie, which attempted to bridge continuity between the movies and the TV series. Not a very good movie.

highlanderthesource.jpgThen in 2007, straight to the SciFi channel, came HIGHLANDER: THE SOURCE, the fifth HIGHLANDER movie, and the first not to be released theatrically. In 2008 it was released to DVD.

It has the distinction of being almost but not quite as bad as HIGHLANDER II. Duncan MacLeod is back, and it’s set in some vague almost-MAD MAX future where society is falling apart.

There’s some mumbo-jumbo about The Source, presumably The Source Of Immortality, a legend among Immortals that everybody neglected to mention through 4 movies and 141 TV episodes. No matter.

We have another villain, called The Guardian, who, like other HIGHLANDER villains, seems to have a thing for bondage fetish clothing.

For some reason Duncan MacLeod’s girlfriend has been getting psychic visions about this Source business.

Hilariously, it’s announced at some point that all the planets in our solar system are moving out of their orbits into alignment. Nobody seems to notice this except the Immortals, even though we’re repeatedly shown this graphic of planets bumping around in the night sky bigger than the Moon. Also, it’s mentioned that this phenomena goes STRAIGHT TO THE CENTER OF OUR GALAXY. We wouldn’t be able to tell this for some 28,000 years, but apparently the speed of light doesn’t exist in the HIGHLANDER universe. No matter.

So we have our good guy, aligned with a handful of other immortals (Maybe all that are left), against the Bad Guy.

They run around Eastern Europe, and, as happens in HIGHLANDER movies, we get a final showdown between the good guy and the villain.

Adrian Paul tries to give some dignity to this, but it’s just bad. The villain is absurd, wearing a small version of a steam engine’s cowcatcher around his neck as an anti-decapitation device. He says everything in various funny voices, and occasionally is shown speeded up like something out of silent movie Keystone Kops routine.

So. Incomprehensible plot, not very good swordplay. Attempt to explain everything with an explanation contradictory and more vague than even the lame attempts of the previous movies.

Anything good about it? Well, we do get to see some characters from the TV series return. The Immortal Methos, and human Joe Dawson, a Watcher (HIGHLANDER Watchers are sort of like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Watchers).

Other than that, drek. It takes a pretty bad movie for me to only give it one star.

But it’s still better than HIGHLANDER 2!

DVD Extras: An 82-minute Making Of documentary that is almost longer than the movie itself (and, unfortunately, more interesting). A tribute to Bill Panzer, producer of the HIGHLANDER movies and TV series who died in 2007. A storyboards-versus-scenes comparison. And a preview of a HIGHLANDER video game.

Posted by Mack Guffin | Filed Under 1 Stars, Action, Adrian Paul, DVD, Jim Byrnes, Peter Wingfield 

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Comments

One Response to “Highlander: The Source”

  1. TheMovieWhore on April 22nd, 2008 12:30 pm

    For the love of Christopher Lambert why in the blue hell do they keep making movies with this franchise. The horse is dead, quit beating it.

    Just discovered your site and I dig it.

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