Video/DVD Review: Highlander: Endgame
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this movie has extreme violence,
sex, and nudity. There's frequent sword fighting, including
many off-screen decapitations, machine-gunning, an impaled
corpse, a burning at the stake, and unrealistic martial arts.
There's not much here for kids.
Families can talk about whether this was a worthy installment
of the
Highlander series
Drawing from the TV series, this installment of the Highlander series follows Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) as he and his partner Duncan (Adrian Paul) are thrown into a violent competition of Immortals. Good battles evil, with the winners taking all.
HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME is one of those what-were-they-thinking? movies. Complete with recurring religious imagery and eye-rolling blather about revenge and redemption, this movie reaches for the sublime but succeeds only in being ridiculous. Based on a fair 1986 movie followed by two contradictory--and abysmal--sequels and a pair of TV series, this latest and supposedly final chapter allies the big-screen hero with his TV counterpart. The problems? The TV shows went off the air several years ago, and anyone unfamiliar with the earlier productions will be bewildered.
The director thinks slow-motion camera work, flammable industrial settings, and nausea-inducing aerial shots make for a compelling movie. Heroes in leather trench coats and a sarcastic villain with a clipped, cultured British accent pass for main characters. Add to the flaws a numbing repetition of sword fights, rife with irritating clashes of steel, and the movie amounts to another straight-to-Blockbuster dud. Yet the gravity-defying martial arts will no doubt appeal to some young action fans.
BeowulfTroy
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