ct@cs.ed.ac.uk (Chris Thornborrow) (04/25/91)
HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING
A film review by Chris Thornborrow
Copyright 1991 Chris Thornborrow
Plot Summary:
The year is 2024. The ozone layer has long since gone and the
earth is now protected from radiation by a shield invented by Connor
McCleod. The shield, although saving lives, has made the atmosphere
hot and humid. Connor is a mortal and a tired old man who has given up
hope. On returning from the opera one night Connor is accosted by the
leader of a "terrorist" organisation. They have tried to find out what
the Company that now runs the shield unit are covering up. Connor is
then attacked by two assassins sent by Katana from the planet Zeist (like
Zeit--get it?). They fail and Connor becomes immortal again by
chopping their heads off. He then brings Ramirez back to life in
Glencoe in Scotland. Both Ramirez and Connor are rebel leaders back on
Zeist and have been sent to earth as punishment. Connor now has the
option to return being the last one but opts to stay with his new found
immortality and fight to find out about the Company and the shield.
Katana meanwhile, fearing Connor would return, sets out himself to kill
the Highlander.
Rating :
2/10 if you liked Highlander
4/10 if you have never seen it.
Being a fan of Highlander and Mr. Connery, I was in the cinema as
soon as I could to see HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING. I wish it had
been quicker. I feel whatever else you can say about a film (bad script
bad music, etc.) if you sit just plain bored through most of it then
nothing much else needs to be said. The film was short but in my
opinion only twelve minutes or so (the time Mr. Connery is on the screen
for) is worth watching.
The plot sounds a little ridiculous but I was willing to give it a
chance. Maybe they could pull it off. Instead, I find that the
characters have completely changed from those in the first film. It's as
if they are different people with the same names. Witness Connor
jumping into bed with the leader of the resistance -- where is the
attitude of "who wants to live forever, when love must die" gone to?
The love sub-plot *must* have had footage cut out. The highlander and
Ramirez both seemed aware of powers they had never mentioned before.
Putting our heroes in deadly situations and then having them walk away
because of some new power is very annoying. I still want to know why
Connor's coat becomes flame proof when he is immortal! We are not given
enough time on Zeist to believe in it, nor are we told why advanced
aliens still use swords to kill. Why not dynamite or laser saws or just
plain bullets followed by a quick chop to the neck? I know the head
needs to come off but you could at least immobilise your opponent with
laser rifles first. To be fair one assassin tried this but he must be
the world's worst shot. Meanwhile Connor develops Luke-Skywalker-like
powers of laser beam deflection.
As for "bad guys," we see a rebellion on Zeist, crushed easier
than a grape and then the rest of the plot depends on Katana being
obsessed with killing McCleod in case he returns to Zeist. Two assassins
are sent, presumably they are meant to be good at killing but an aged
Connor kills them both with no problems. No more assassins are sent.
Katana, supposedly a very powerful man goes himself to kill Connor. Has
he no more assassins? Has he no better? Why was the rebellion crushed
so easily then? Michael Ironside is totally unconvincing (bring back
the Kurgan). He seems like a cartoon character and really isn't that
evil, just stupid and violent. We see the Hollywood trick of the chief
nasty threatening a child again and killing lots of innocents. Yet he
still seems like no threat -- perhaps because he seems too stupid to
threaten Connor, or maybe because his two best assassins wouldn't have
been amiss with Larry, Curly and Mo.
So much for plot and characters. The music is atrocious. It is
at best intrusive and at worst annoying. Bring back Queen. There was
an audible sigh (of relief?) when Connor played a Queen track in a
juke box. I believe this at least is to be corrected for the American
release.
The acting is at best flat, except for Mr. Connery. Lambert is
uninteresting and when he delivered "There can be only one" this time
around it just made me wish there had only been one -- HIGHLANDER.
Michael Ironside is unconvincing; sorry, Michael, I usually like you and
everyone else was incredibly forgetable.
So why 2/10? Visually the film is interesting at all times. It
has a BLADE RUNNER feel to it and some of the special effects are quite
stunning. Add to this an irrepressible Sean Connery who smiles
throughout the whole film -- or is he smirking to himself? His lines
and delivery might make the film worthwhile had it not been so obvious
that he cannot take the whole thing seriously at all but hey -- *I'd*
have done it for 12 million.
Oh, and I agree with a previous reviewer, she *does* look like
Sharon Stone but I believe it is her first film. Incidentally there is
a line producer credited and I hear rumours of HIGHLANDER III: THE
WIZARD.
Save your money. It stinks.
"There should have been only one."
Chris Thornborrow
--
Chris Thornborrow : JCMB Room 2410, Edinburgh University, West Mains Rd.
Tel : 031 650 5120 Email : ct@uk.ac.ed.lfcscsd35@seq1.keele.ac.uk (Jonathan Knight) (04/25/91)
HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING
A film review by Jonathan Knight
Copyright 1991 Jonathan Knight
I went to see the sequel to HIGHLANDER last night, and I can
honestly say it is very irritating. HIGHLANDER was "a kind of magic"
where the mystery was maintained throughout the film, the characters
were intelligent and the film made an effort to make us believe what we
were seeing. HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING makes no effort along these
lines and in fact appears to have been written by someone who didn't
watch the first film carefully.
The plot is simple: the world has lost its ozone layer and people
are dying from UV radiation from the sun. McCloud has developed some
ingenious device which places a "shield" around the earth to block off
the UV radiation. We see it switched on and then skip 25 years into the
future where we find the shield is blocking all light from the sun and
stars and an evil company now controls the shield. The countries of the
world pay the shield company to keep the radiation from their people and
so this company has something of a monopoly. The world is a depressing
place which is in constant darkness and decay.
Having got the plot out of the way in about six minutes (including
the credits) and about four sentences of meaningful dialogue, the film
starts to destroy the magic of the first film. Firstly we find out that
McCloud is in fact an alien from the planet Zeiss and together with a
bunch of rebels (including Ramirez) was banished to earth. When only
one rebel was left on earth the winner would gain the prize; either be
mortal on earth (no mention this time of the "knowledge") or return to
Zeiss. Before McCloud is captured on Zeiss, he and Ramirez go through a
ceremony called the quickening in which they both dunk their fingers in
a pot of water.
This basic plot causes a whole bunch of problems. How was Ramirez
sent to a different point in time to McCloud? This planet doesn't have
time travel and all the other transfers arrive together. How come
McCloud doesn't recognise Ramirez in the first film if in fact they were
fairly good friends to start off with? How come the villagers in
Scotland didn't notice McCloud didn't have a Scottish accent when he
turned up? Why did he have to be taught to sword fight when that was
the main weapon they used on Zeiss? McCloud had the prize and knew what
everyone was thinking, home come he only solved the ozone problem, what
about war and famine, are we to believe he didn't turn his talent to
those problems after he perfected the shield?
Obviously, with McCloud aging and all the other immortals dead, the
film then decides its time to add some action. The ruler of the planet
Zeiss (General something or other) decides that he doesn't want McCloud
back on Zeiss and so sends out a couple of guys to wipe him out.
McCloud dispatches them and because they were immortals, he too becomes
immortal again and returns to being the age he was when he lost his
immortality. So the General decides to turn up and do the job himself.
He decides to take over the shield company for no reason that is
explained or even questioned during the film and then McCloud and he
fight it out--guess who wins. Having done this McCloud then destroys
the shield (he has found out along the way that the ozone layer has
repaired itself) and so we wait for HIGHLANDER III.
Ramirez is reincarnated by McCloud and helps out in a few bits and
pieces along the way. Nothing significant--basically he's the comic
interlude.
There is a female in the film, basically a blonde bimbo terrorist
who demonstrates no intelligence, to whom McCloud is attracted. It is
she who discovers the ozone layer is back when she and a bunch of
friends break into the control room for the shield and take a reading.
She then follows McCloud around for the rest of the movie.
There are many bits of the film that are just done for effect.
When the general arrives, he lands on earth in a tube train (that's
subway train for the Americans) and decides that he wants some new
clothes. So he kills the nearest guy wearing something he likes. Then
he decides to drive the train:
General: "I bet you've always wanted to drive one of these?"
Some poor kid he has by the neck nods.
General: "Me too."
A curious statement as he's just arrived from a planet where there
was no evidence of anything that even looked like an American subway
train. He then manages to get the train up to 400 miles per hour, gets
it to look like a Catherine wheel and then ploughs it through a brick
wall in which it stops after about 30 feet without even a dent to the
driver's cabin.
The special effects are all done to excess; they are also very
poor. The flight scenes between McCloud and the immortal assassins are
done by speeding the film up. This presumably was done to make some
fast action; however, the camera moves too fast making it hard to follow
and the flying is jerky and has no grace. Some scenes are shown at
normal speed and this gives a far better impression of the gracefulness
of a sword fight in the air.
The scenes where McCloud kills an immortal are seriously overdone.
In the first HIGHLANDER there were usually a few things moving and a few
cars going bang. In this one he has the effect of a fairly large bomb.
Everything within 100 yards bursts into flames including all the cars,
most of the buildings and a petrol tanker that happened to be passing.
The death toll should have been about 100, but it seems McCloud wasn't
worried about all this destruction he had just wreaked, and calmly walks
away.
So here are the movie goofs I spotted. Firstly the script.
Secondly, when the general is transported to earth, you see his ungloved
hand just before he disappears--when he arrives on earth it is gloved.
When McCloud and Ramirez go to the maximum-security prison then are
machine-gunned, we see McCloud's door open and he is shown taking lots
of bullets on the floor. When the bimbo is taken from the boot she
looks into the car and McCloud is now comfortable in his seat and the
door is closed. I also got confused between the max-security prison and
the shield. It seems that at the end these are the same place and yet I
got the impression they were supposed to be separate.
In conclusion this is a reasonable film, but a very poor sequel.
For that reason I'd score it -2 on a scale of -4 to +4.
--
______ JANET :jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs Jonathan Knight,
/ BITNET:jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@ukacrl Department of Computer Science
/ _ __ other :jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk University of Keele, Keele,
(_/ (_) / / UUCP :...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan Staffordshire. ST5 5BG. U.K.