Connor MacLeod is immortal. That’s the premise of Highlander, and it’s enough to build a movie around. What it doesn’t build is a satisfying one.
Christopher Lambert plays Connor, a Scottish warrior who discovers he can’t die — not from disease, not from age, not even from a sword wound that should kill him. Instead he recovers and grows stronger, gaining power from each foe he defeats. The film opens in 1985 New York, where Connor meets an old enemy in the parking garage of Madison Square Garden. After a duel, Connor beheads him and takes his strength, then hides his sword in the ceiling. NYPD officers stop him on suspicion of murder but can’t prove it.
Trailer, via StudiocanalUK.
The Quickening
The story then flashes back to 1536, the Scottish Highlands. Connor fights against the rival Fraser clan, who are helped by an outlander knight in exchange for his right to slay Connor. In battle, the knight fatally wounds Connor but is driven off by his clansmen. Connor makes a full recovery, but his lover Kate and his cousin Dougal accuse him of witchcraft. The clan wants to kill him, but his other cousin, chieftain Angus, mercifully exiles him. Connor settles quietly into a new life as a blacksmith and marries a woman named Heather MacDonald.
Then Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez arrives. He’s a wandering swordsman who explains that Connor and others like him are “Immortals.” They have a sixth sense called the “quickening,” and they can be killed only by beheading. Each immortal must be ready to do battle with others, save on holy ground. Ramírez trains Connor in sword fighting, and the two become friends. He tells Connor that as the number of immortals dwindles, they will gather in a distant land for a final confrontation until only one remains with the combined quickening of all.
Ramírez warns Connor against children. Immortals cannot conceive them, and he urges Connor to leave Heather so he’ll be unburdened in the fight ahead. The knight Connor met, the Kurgan, is a powerful and vicious immortal who would subject humanity to an eternity of darkness.
The Kurgan’s Return
The Kurgan returns in the present day, seeking Connor. He hires a prostitute named Candy to draw Connor out. NYPD officer Garfield suspects Nash as a possible perp in the homicide of Fasil, the man Connor beheaded at the start. The film builds toward a final confrontation in New York City, where Connor will face his ultimate rival.
The film is a mess. The flashbacks break the flow of the story without ever fully explaining why Connor’s past matters. The romance with Heather feels tacked on rather than earned. The Kurgan, played by Clancy Brown, is supposed to be a terrifying force of evil, but the script gives him nothing to do except chase Connor across rooftops. Sean Connery shows up as Ramírez, a mentor figure, but his scenes are thin and his advice is vague. Roxanne Hart, playing Brenda J. Wyatt, is given almost nothing to do beyond standing around looking worried.
“There can be only one.”
That line has entered pop culture, but the film itself never earns it. The final confrontation drags on without tension, and the payoff is a quickening effect that looks like a fireworks display. It’s spectacle without substance.
The Numbers
Highlander was a commercial failure on its initial theatrical release, grossing only a little less than $13 million worldwide against a production budget of $19 million. Critics were mixed, and the film’s reputation has since settled into a cult status rather than a classic one. British rock band Queen recorded several songs for the film’s soundtrack, which also appeared on their 1986 studio album, A Kind of Magic. Another Queen song, “Hammer to Fall,” is used in the film, though it was recorded for their previous studio album, The Works.
| Comparison | Highlander (1986) | The 1985 Opening |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | 1536 Scottish Highlands / 1985 New York | 1985 Madison Square Garden |
| Key Event | Connor’s exile | Connor’s duel with Fasil |
| Cast | Christopher Lambert, Clancy Brown, Sean Connery | Professional wrestlers as themselves |
A Cult Classic, Not a Good Film
Highlander became a cult film and inspired several film sequels and television spin-offs. That’s a strange legacy for a movie this thin. The action is functional, the sword fights are competent, but the story never rises above its own gimmick. Lambert is charismatic, but he’s given a script that treats him as a pawn rather than a hero.
The film is best remembered for its quickening effects and its tagline. It’s not a bad movie to watch once, but it’s a terrible movie to recommend. It sets up a mythology — immortals, the quickening, the final confrontation — and then spends its runtime doing nothing with it.
Highlander is a failure. It fails to explain its own rules, it fails to develop its characters, and it fails to deliver on its own promise. The tagline “There can be only one” is a joke the film never quite understands.
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