HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME Featuring, the David Manning of trailers Sony's come under a lot of fire recently for this David Manning fooferaw, but where were the cries of protest at Dimension's far more insidious ploy to get people to see this movie? Now, granted, the Highlander movies have long since been at a point where anybody who goes to see them should know what they're getting into, and their ads are less about attracting viewers than alerting the built-in audience. But that doesn't make the ad campaign for this movie any less sleazy; at least "David Manning" only suckered in people foolish enough to swallow raves from critics they've never even heard of, but people should have had every right to expect to see what they saw in the trailers for this movie. The trailers for this movie contained numerous FX shots which had any number of "hey, cool!" story and action possibilities. Included were the villain (Bruce Payne) splitting in half into two people, Payne blowing on a crystal ball containing a screaming head, making it shatter, stars Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert jumping through some sort of magical portal, Payne stopping a thrown sword in midair, and several others. It's not that these scenes were written, shot, and discarded in the editing process, a not-uncommon happenstance in an age where trailers show up a year and a half before the movie itself does; they were filmed ONLY for the trailers, and had nothing at all to do with the (more pedestrian) movie. That's way worse than some phony critic. Okay, rant over. On to the review. Highlander was a jolly good time, but by the time its first sequel came out, I was left utterly confused as to the ideas behind these shows, and no sequel or TV series since has shed the slightest bit of light on things for me. The idea of Highlander is that a bunch of "immortals" who could only be killed by decapitation, fought against each other over the centuries until there was only one left, and that one would get The Prize, which turned out to be...mortality. (man, that's one crappy prize) Then came the sequel, which had more immortals, the receiver of The Prize as immortal as he ever was, some alien planet...I just didn't understand at all, and considering the film's reputation since, I'm not alone. The third movie refused to shed any light on anything, and had Mario Van Peebles playing the villain as might Harvey Fierstein to boot, and the most hilariously awkward tribute to A Tale Of Two Cities as could be imagined. And while I've enjoyed the occasional episodes of the TV series that I've seen, they haven't cleared anything up. So, on to Highlander: Endgame, which teams up the stars of both the movies (Lambert) and TV series (Paul) against yet another immortal, played by Payne. This guy isn't much interested in the game to get The Prize (and who could blame him, since there are better prizes available on Bingo night), he just wants to hurt and offend and piss off other immortals through the centuries by killing their mortal loved ones and generally just being a prick. Neither one of our heroes can stop him alone, and yet they cannot team up because it's against The Rules (who enforces The Rules? Why would they continue to care about The Rules in the face of an opponent who proudly declares that he won't follow them?). What to do, what to do? Lambert is as awful as he ever is; I was going to ask just how movies starring this guy keep getting made, since they never seem to make money, but I guess it's something like the convoluted math behind all of these Saturday Night Live spinoff flicks. Paul has short hair here, and while on the TV series he had a lot of easygoing charm (not unlike Kevin Sorbo), he spends most of this movie sulking with his hands in his pockets. Payne, meanwhile, continues his descent into British-accented-villain-in-made-for-video-crapwagons unabated. The plot makes little sense, not like you see these movies for the plot. It's actually kind of a shame that we don't see these movies for the plot, because the premises are so rich with possibilities. There's something about a group called "the Watchers", whose job is to...well, that's not very clear, but they apparently keep the occasional immortal locked up so they don't hurt anybody, and there are good Watchers and bad Watchers, and they literally keep score of which immortal has hacked off the most heads. It's my understanding that this movie has much more to do with the TV series than with the first three movies. Anyway, some of the battle scenes are all right, one of them (Paul against Donnie Yen, one of Payne's henchmen) actually kicks some considerable ass. Too bad this movie keeps recycling; didn't the climax of the last movie take place on the catwalks of some abandoned factory? Well, so does this one, and this one even has a room full of hanging, swinging chains and a big, unattended vat of acid. And for those people who still get a kick out of the "death scenes", where the death of an immortal causes everything within a few miles to shatter or explode (and the police STILL haven't caught on?), there are a few of those here, though I for one am pretty tired of them, and they had better ones on the TV show. Lots of flashbacks are shown, from 17th Century Scotland, to 18th Century Italy and Ireland, to "10 years ago" New York, most of them excuses to show off some pretty scenery and/or costumes, and some of these damn flashbacks are actually set within other flashbacks. This is frequently a problem with these Highlander shows, though as its own kind of editing "language", I suppose it makes sense to the fans. Would Highlander: Endgame have been a better film if it actually contained what we saw in the trailer? Almost inevitably. At any rate, those in charge of promoting it must've known it was a dog, because the video box loudly proclaims that it's a different cut, we're sorry, we're doing it right this time, we promise. I caught this because a friend taped it off of Superchannel or Pay-Per-View or something, and looking at the IMDb, it looks like it's the video cut. It might be fair to say that Highlander: Endgame is a movie strictly for BIG fans of the movies and especially the series, who are better informed than I to explain to you the many, many apparent discrepancies, clashing ideas and just plain obtuse nonsense going on here. That having been said, it holds very little appeal for anybody who isn't in that group, and will not encourage anybody who isn't a member to become one, and I'm happy to give it a negative review because no movie should come with as much "you have to know such-and-such going in" baggage as this one does. BACK TO THE H's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE