Highlander Reviews

After watching a wrestling match in Madison Square Garden, Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert), a Manhattan antique dealer, goes to the parking garage where a man in an overcoat steps in front of him and draws a broadsword. Apparently prepared for this unlikely event, MacLeod pulls a samurai sword out from under his own overcoat and the two go at it, sparks flying off their crashing blades. Eventually MacLeod disarms his adversary, then lops the stranger's head off with a stroke. Immediately he is transported to Scotland in 1536, where he learns from Ramirez (Sean Connery) of a bizarre competition among immortal warriors. Adapted from a senior thesis written by UCLA film student Gregory Widen, the story is not nearly the problem that the dialog is. Lambert's embarrassing French accent virtually destroys what little credibility his character has. (This may be the only film to give us a Swiss playing a New Yorker who's actually a 16th Century Scot and a Scot playing a Spaniard who's actually an ancient Egyptian.) Connery, on the other hand, is a welcome sight. It is director Russell Mulcahy's style that doesn't work here.