HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME

By: Matthew F. Saunders
Date: Friday, September 01, 2000

Sometimes you don't always get what you want. As a long-standing Highlander fan, I really wanted to like this movie. And while there are definitely some enjoyable moments in the film, especially for fans, in the end the film has too many problems to overlook.

First off, the story's foundation is faulty. It's been said many times before, with each successive sequel, but it bears repeating once again: The first film was a complete--and finished--story. Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) killed the Kurgan and won the Prize. End of story. Any attempt to continue, to posit the existence of yet more immortals or to dismiss Connor's victory, sends each sequel teetering on the precipice. It's a plot point that can't be overcome.

When the TV series spinoff was introduced in 1993, it did what many spinoffs do: re-booted continuity. Connor's confrontation with the Kurgan still took place, but it was not the final battle for the Prize. It was simply a key confrontation in a world still teeming with hundreds of dueling immortals. Events continued forward, and fans watched the exploits of Connor's younger cousin and protege, Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul). Lambert even guest-starred in the series' pilot, to hand the torch off from Connor to Duncan.

Highlander: Endgame hands off that torch one more time, re-teaming the two immortals for their first big-screen adventure together. In it, they must fight against an evil immortal, Kell (Bruce Payne), who seeks vengeance against Connor for a centuries-old wrong. The movie draws heavily on the first film, but serves more as a direct sequel to the TV series than the existing film franchise. As such, it ignores the previous two sequels and again the original's ending, leaving moviegoers unfamiliar with the TV show little ground on which to stand.

While some might think it a boon to forget the mistakes of the last two films, Endgame asks general audiences--most of whom are not composed of hard-core fans--to start from scratch all over again. It says to them, 'Forget everything you know about where we last left the characters, for--once again--none of that matters.' As frustrating as that is for established fans, who desire a linear continuity more than anyone else, it makes the movies wholly inaccessible to everyone else. Why bother seeing a sequel if the last one you saw didn't matter?

That's the film's biggest crime. And by plunging head-first into TV continuity without explanation, it falsely assumes that every viewer will know what the heck is going on and who everyone is. No one is introduced, least of all Duncan, who takes the lead from Connor as the film's real star. And forget series co-stars Methos (Peter Wingfield) and Dawson (Jim Byrnes); they make their requisite appearances, but the film lets them slip in and out of the story with no explanation or development. They're simply gratuitous, much as the Lone Gunmen were in X-Files: Fight the Future, showing up only for the contrived purpose of offering exposition and providing Duncan with a timely rescue.

The film does attempt via several flashbacks to fill in some of the gaps surrounding Duncan, as well as his and Connor's past together, casting them as both mentor/pupil and brothers. However, the film cuts too quickly between past and present. The duo show sparks of chemistry, moreso in the past as a pair of dashing rogues. But the moments are too few and too brief to gain a true appreciation of their relationship. It's a shame, for the seeds of a much deeper movie lie with their bond. In fact, it's the lynchpin of the film. Without it, their conflict in the modern day, along with the ultimate sacrifices each must make in their final confrontation with Kell, loses a large measure of its poignancy. Highlander fans already well immersed in their relationship will be able to fill in some of the emotional gaps, but its resonance within the movie itself is sorely underdeveloped.

Similarly, Duncan's relationship with his newly discovered lost love, the immortal Faith (Lisa Barbuscia), loses much of its edge to underdevelopment. As the modern-day Faith, she hates Duncan for a mistake he made in the past that cost her her mortality. And once again, while we are given a tiny insight into that hatred and the anger that fuels it, it's not enough. Scenes with Faithor Kate as she was called pre-immortalityare almost non-existent. Duncan's misguided actions are clear, but we are given little to establish the deep love we're told they held for each other, which makes Duncan's mistake and Faith's 300-year-old hatred less tragic.

What the movie is ultimately missing is its heart. There's plenty of pathos, but it means nothing if one isn't invested in the characters. For fans who know the characters, the investment is already there, the story acting as a guidepost telling us when and where to superimpose the emotions we'd expect. But good filmmaking needs more than that, and audienceswhether they're 'in the know' or notshouldn't have to do the film's work for it.

Without that core, Duncan's desire to help Connor fight Kell, his desire to redeem Faith and gain her forgiveness, and Connor's desire to escape the horror that his immortal life has become, ring hollow. In fact, Connor's world-weariness here casts him more as a dour pessimist than the tragic man living a life of quiet desperation we were introduced to in the first film. The characters all go through the motions, and you want to feel invested in their turmoil, but are never given quite enough to bridge that emotional gap.

If we are given any clear window initially into a character's motivations, it's with Kell. We witness the act that shatters his life and sends him after Connor on the vendetta that drives the entire movie. He is truly flawed, and in some ways more tragic, for he fails to see the complicity of his own actions in his fate. But the film misses the point again, giving us too few examples historically of the depths of Kell's vengeance. Without that pattern to fall back on, Connor's later desperationof a man more willing to give up than to fight back, to seek his own justice or, better yet, redeem himselfagain rings hollow.

The film's themes of love, brotherhood, vengeance and redemption are not as complex as they should be. So where does the blame lie? Certainly the script is at fault, for it fails to take full advantage of the tools at its disposal. The actors, particularly Paul, try their best, but can only take the material so far; only Payne borders on campiness with some of Kell's overblown histrionics.

The final culprit seems to be the editingthe movie officially boasts no less than six editors. At a running time of 88 minutes, the final cut is so full of quick, jerky jumps that it prevents a fluid, organic narrative from ever unfolding. The story and the actorslet alone the audienceare never allowed to breathe, leading one to believe that the solution to some of the film's problems might well lie on the cutting room floor. We're pushed through at blinding speed, with few opportunities along the way to invest ourselves in the goings on. As a result, one can't help but wonder what was left out.

If the film's three trailers are any indication, perhaps that's ultimately for the best. Several obvious scenes in which Kell demonstrates supernatural powers have been droppedsave one in which he inexplicably transforms one sword into two. It actually serves the story better if Kell is simply motivated by an undying albeit extremely warped and exaggerated sense of vengeance. If that's all that was removed, then the story was suffering fundamentally before it even got to the editing room and no amount of creative scene shuffling was going to save it.

In the end, Endgame far exceeds the previous sequels, but it still falls far short of its potential. Each of its problems could have been overcome, including introducing film audiences to Duncan and the revised, TV-directed continuity. Instead, we're left with a choppy sequence of events that never quite comes together. It's a shame, because Highlander is a rich mythos full of all the action, comedy, romance and tragedy one could ever ask for. But as Endgame unfortunately continues to prove, it simply needs better packaging. While fans like me will still enjoy certain elements of it, it's a shame we weren't given something better.