This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

Okay it’s time to look at a film that has a very interesting plot but unfortunately it is completely wasted by having a lot of screen time take place in the past and also getting lost in the grittiness of it all. This should have been a really fun action movie with a whole lot of excitement going on and instead it was all squandered. What a shame.

The film starts off with Connor dueling an immortal in a parking lot. There’s a lot of destruction but in the end Connor wins and absorbs the guy’s life essence. The cops arrest Connor but he gets out due to their being a lack of evidence. So what’s going on here? Well basically there are a bunch of immortals running around so there is finally a tournament to bump them all off. The only way for an immortal to die is to be destroyed (So they’re not really immortal tbh unless you’re just thinking lifespan and in a way that is what some people think of but to me you’re not truly an immortal unless you are unable to die) so everyone is going to fight until there is only one immortal left standing. The final battle appears to be fated to be Connor vs Kurgan as they have a deep history.

Okay so the first massive mistake the film makes is constantly jumping between the present and the past. In general as a rule of thumb you do not want to do this. If you absolutely have to do it though, try to get all of the scenes out of the way early so we can get on with it. Instead this just keeps on going over and over and over again right through to the end. You’re sick and tired of seeing the past each time. It also has to be one of the most generic immortal storylines you’ll see as everyone betrays the guy because it’s immortal.

I’m always impressed at just how awful humanity is in all of these moments. So you’ve decided to anger a guy who won’t die from normal injuries and just hope that he doesn’t slaughter everyone? They’re super lucky that he doesn’t want to hurt any of them because this was quickly turning into a villain origin story. Then Connor meets a lady and has a romance but of course he won’t grow old while she does so she ends up dying. The film has some extra grit by allowing the villain to get his hands on her while Connor isn’t around which is definitely the worst scene of the film.

It’s off screen fortunately but that really didn’t need to be in the film. We already have so many reasons to dislike Kurgan, this is just piling on at this point. Man I have so many problems with the flashback stuff. Ultimately it’s just not interesting and it’s beating down a point that you could have easily understood from context clues. The only scenes of real importance here is when Ramirez shows up to train Connor and even that could have been off screen. You knew Ramirez was doomed the whole time anyway. The mentor is always doomed in these things. At least he put up a really good fight though.

Ramirez was a decent guy and I give him credit for trying to show Connor the ropes. He really did make the guy a whole lot stronger and also informed him of everything going on. If not Connor would have been at a really disadvantage which is why the whole tournament’s not very fair anyway. If you don’t know someone to give you the info dump then you’re just going to get absolutely wasted when the fighting starts anyway since you won’t even be expecting to have to fight for your life until it’s too late. Not very balanced eh?

Connor is a reasonable main character but not great or anything. He’s all business when it comes to the fights and has experience being an immortal. So that’s all good but you do think he would be a little better at handling himself socially in that respect. For example when the cops showed up at the beginning Connor really didn’t even try to explain himself all that much. At least he could have come up with some kind of crazy story. He’s rich so he might have been able to get away with it a lot easier.

The main villain Kurgan is barely a character so much as he’s just someone that needs to be taken down. He’s pure evil and his only real motivation is to murder everyone. Not exactly a deep character. He’s a strong one to be sure but you’re just waiting for him to go down. I think the film could have made him more interesting and in general I wish we could have seen more of the combatants. For the most part they all just show up to get destroyed as quickly as possible.

Brenda is also a character who doesn’t do a whole lot considering how often she appears. She wants to find clues to Connor and how he got such an old sword. She even resorts to asking him out to trap him while she has her tape recorder on but he sees through the traps rather quickly. I suppose she does have one key moment where she saves him during the fight but that’s not really enough for her to turn the corner and be more interesting.

Highlander is the definition of a film that was way too ambitious and so you end up feeling like it left a ton of meat on the bone. I wanted to learn more about the immortals, see more of the action, and just enjoy the tournament. Instead we’re stuck learning about Connor’s past over and over again and the fights play a backseat role. The actual fights are really good when they occur but they absolutely should have been the main focus and it should not even have been close. When your main characters are all immortals you really can’t go wrong.

Overall, Highlander is a film with a lot of potential but it didn’t focus on the most interesting elements of the premise. It should have been more about the fun immortal fights and everything instead of zipping around in the past. We didn’t need to see all of that to be honest and the past scenes hurt the film tremendously. It tries too hard to be edgy instead of focusing on the fun fights and in the end it definitely did not meet expectations. I would say to just skip this one and watch a different action film like Mortal Kombat instead. Now that one really focuses on the tournament rather than on all of the side stuff and it makes for a better overall experience.

Overall 3/10