fondly and rightly remembered as something of a genre classic. After beheading his attacker, resulting in a strange blast of supernatural light emanating from the body, the police begin to investigate and close in on Nash, while we flash back into his memories of his past… of a time when he was a clansman in the Highlands of Scotland known as Connor MacLeod, of when he was killed by a mysterious adversary known only as The Kurgan (Clancy Brown), of when he strangely rose from his death and learnt of his immortality from a roguish rapscallion who looks a lot like Sean Connery having the time of his life, and of The Quickening and The Prize, the ultimate reward for the last remaining immortal because, as we’re continually told by everyone in the film and so roundly ignored by studio execs after the cult success the film garnered, there can be only one. Russell Nash (Christopher Lambert) is an antiques dealer ambushed by a stranger in the underground car park of Madison Square Garden. The ensuing movie has an almost child-like approach to its scattershot narrative, throwing anything and everything into the mix and carried along on a wave of infectious charm and simple fun (remember when movies could just be that?) it somehow delivers a film that has remained lodged in the collective conscious of a generation of moviegoers and fondly and rightly remembered as something of a genre classic. … yet Gregory Widen’s beautiful, haunting and romantic tale of immortality sucking, riffing quite elegantly on Anne Rice’s similar themes of her infamous undead, was given a huge kick up its proverbial by Australian music video director Russell Mulcahy’s unbridled energy. Obviously ignoring any sense of logical and coherent narrative (these immortals evolve/landed to kill each other? Why? Yet none of them want to actually do this, other than the nominal antagonist who is the only one doing what they should? Resulting in what exactly? Their complete annihilation and eradication? Eh?) in favour of hyper-stylised visuals and tonal montages backed with a strangely esoteric and often anachronistic rock opera soundtrack… these are not the bones of a commercial science-fiction/fantasy film, especially one made in the mid-1980s… Is Highlander the most mainstream art film ever made? Russell Mulcahy’s music video writ large starring a Scot pretending to be a Spanish Egyptian and a Swiss Frenchman pretending to be a Scot transcends every part of its subjectively flawed DNA to become and remain an all-time classic.
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