westley

This is my old bad movie review of Highlander 2: the Quickening, which is the movie that made me start writing bad movie reviews.

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I just wanna warn everybody from the get-go that this is a pretty long review. For that reason, I've separated it into two segments: Part 1 and Part 2. I could spend a lifetime studying this movie, could write volumes, and then pass it on to my children to continue the work after me. It's a human study that inspires us, no requires us, to ask questions, "How does the human brain really work?", "How did we go from ape-men to modern Homo Sapiens?"; "Are there still ape-men out there somehow, who knuckle around in Hollywood and make movies?" I have so many questions, it's like how a conversation with God would be. "God, when you helped Gideon, did you really stop time?"; "God, what really happened to the dinosaurs?"; "God, why do you hate fags?" ***(In case you don't know me, that's a joke) Millions of questions without end.

Without further ado, let me make it clear where I stand on this movie. I could just say this movie sucks, or that this movie is a piece of shit. And I will: This movie is a piece of shit! It sucks, or what are the kids saying these days? Blows, it blows, perhaps? Doesn't matter, this movie sucks and blows. This movie sucks and blows so hard it could handle a set of bagpipes the size of Jupiter like it was taking a walk in the park. Roger Ebert said in his review (I paraphrase), "this movie is awesome in its badness, it has to be seen to be believed." I'll go one further, I've seen this movie and still don't believe it. It is unbelievable. This movie is like a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong, a grotesque deformity of moviemaking that is freakish in its absurdity. It belongs on the island of Dr. Moreau as a pitiful, loathed specimen that must be kept alive only to show mankind the evil that men do, to serve as a benchmark clearly indicating the paths we should not take. Set me in the middle of Kansas, with only twelve Eskimo kids, two camels, a jug of maple syrup, a six pack, and a barrel of sand and I could make a much better movie than this.

Part 1
Let's start with the title, "Highlander 2: the Quickening". What is quickening? I looked it up at this link, and you can as well if you want to know. After I read that, I still didn't get the meaning behind the title. There is no presence of "quickening" unless, I don't know unless it has something to do with the sun, or something, I guess. Did I miss something? Some grad student got out a Thesaurus for this, and was thinking, "Oh man, this'll be cool". I mean it should be easy to identify the meaning behind a sequel's title. In "Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo", there's some kind of boogaloo going on. In "Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason takes Manhattan", Jason is in Manhattan. I understand these things. This movie could just as easily be called "Highlander 2: Who stole my shoe?" and it would make as much sense.

The year is 2024 and McLeod (Christopher Lambert), the original character from the first movie is back. Everything is dark and shitty because there's no atmosphere anymore as the ozone is depleted. I guess it depleted in a time span of 38 years based on the time frame of the first movie (1986). The gist of the story is that because the ozone has depleted, a shield must be constructed to thwart the harmful effects of having no ozone, but now in 2024 the ozone has replenished itself, but the evil Shield Company wants to keep things the way they are in order to charge the entire Earth for their services. What caused the ozone to be depleted? It states in the opening liners that industrial pollution has caused it. Was it plastics, nuclear radiation? chemical manufacture, the exhaust coming out of Bush's mouth? His ass? I get his orifices confused. Is it possible that the ozone layer could be destroyed and turn around and replenish itself in a time span of 38 years? Raise your hand if you don't think so. But, hey who cares? This is only one of many quandaries to come. In his spare time McLeod has devised this shield, which is aptly named The Shield (should have gotten out your Thesaurus for that one, dickhead), that blocks the harmful penetrating rays of the now overwhelming sun. In his spare time as an immortal sword-collecting antiques dealer, he's also a world-renowned astrophysicist and meteorological ecologist. I guess he used to hang with Sir Isaac Newton.

Ok, it's 'splainin time. Now the director (I use that term lightly) is ready to give us the real low-down about McLeod and where he came from. This is what this movie was supposed to be all about according to the back of the videocassette box; I got the Director's Cut. Let's go over to Zeist: Home world of Immortals. The scene unfolds upon a desert war where Zeist rebels are gathering to defeat the evil General Katana (Michael Ironside). About 30 seconds later we are taken inside the enclave of a Rebel gathering. Sean Connery walks in front of the gathering folds without introduction completely out of nowhere. I've always liked Sean Connery, hell he's James Bond. But, if I saw him in a bar somewhere today I'd have to ask him, "What's up with Highlander 2, dude?" He states that they need to select a new leader. Why? Who knows. He randomly glances over the assemblage and selects McLeod. Haven't you ever done that before; walk through a crowd of hundreds of people and just fixate on one fella and declare: that guy is a fricking superhero! He states that he has eyes that see what they cannot see. Very deep. This is not explained further. McLeod and Connery touch hands, purple lightning rods are set off and McLeod is then officially the leader. The purple lightning rods are not explained, I think it makes him immortal. I'm pretty sure the special effect used here was one of those globes from Spencer's that when you touch it the electricity comes to your fingertips, and its like purple. They used a blue screen or something and deleted that to make it look like they were actually touching each other when they were actually touching the globe. Fancy!

About 30 seconds later, the Rebels go into desert battle looking like intergalactic space pirates brandishing their swords. The evil army has super-duper machine guns that shoot super-duper bullets. Swords vs. Super-Duper Machine guns ergo the evil army wins. About 30 seconds later, McLeod and Connery sit in front a tribunal. There are three judges who stand side by side and never move their mouths, but a voice emanates from their general direction and it sounds like Hal Holbrook. It's explained that most war criminals are executed, however since they are immortals they will be exiled from Zeist and relocated on Earth (Zeist being a war-ridden desert planet and Earth a lush, green unspoiled exotic paradise) and forced to battle other intergalactic immortals in a planetary battle royale with the slogan "There can be only one".

Back to the future: Lucy Marcus, ecologist and terrorist at large - and who is infinitely annoying - breaks into The Shield corporation where the shield operates. Obviously the location of The Shield is one of the most guarded of fortresses on the face of the planet due to the fact that it "protects" the Earth from total destruction. Her and her comrades sneak around, break in through something like a janitor's door, overpower one engineer and they are inside The Shield's inner labyrinth whereby they determine the ozone has indeed regenerated. They then escape by running into the woods. Lucy's team is never seen again and she's out to find McLeod, inventor of the Shield, to gain his alliance. Makes perfect sense. If I just broke into the Federal Reserve Bank the first person I'm gonna seek contact with is the director of the bank and attempt to strike up an alliance. Works every time. She mills about the streets, through crowds of people who look like intergalactic space pirates. I truly believe they are the same Zeist rebel extras seen before now utilized on the streets of Earth. She finds McLeod in the middle of the city. This takes place about 30 seconds after she has escaped from the Shield security forces. She drops down on to the street from a ladder and in to his life. Really.

Part 2
Two scenes of this movie really stand out as "special moments". This is the first one. Lucy Marcus finds McLeod who is now old and leathery. This is because he has decided to shed his immortality for mortality, like an elf or something, because he is tired of it all. At least I guess that's the reason, the movie never really says why. McLeod in his old age has somehow transformed into Uncle Shmoe (draw comparisons to any old, stereotypical Jewish guy who walks around and cups his bottom lip over his upper lip in order to hold back his dentures), who speaks with a thin gravelly voice and probably says things like, "Shield, Schmield" and has that ever-present old man hum when he talks, saying things like, "hummmm, you bastards, hummmm". They jump in the car and speed away. Then McLeod runs into two hit men sent from Zeist by General Katana with strict orders to kill McLeod. Katana wants McLeod dead. If you can watch this movie and tell me why he wants McLeod dead, I will pay you 5 million dollars.

Enter the hit men. Two fellas who look like a synthesis of Jeff Van Gundy, former head coach of the New York Knicks,


(this guy)

and Phyllis Diller wearing Phyllis Diller porcupine wigs. These guys aren't even menacing enough to make it as villains on a Scooby-Doo episode. A fight ensues with the bad guys chasing McLeod around on scaffolding. At one point Hitman #1 swats a support holding scaffolding together, which causes it to fall to the ground where it subsequently explodes. *Helpful hint*: if you ever need to erect scaffolding make sure you don't get the combustible kind, I learned a whole lot from this movie and you can too. There's a similar scene later in the movie where an elevator freed of its support cable, falls several stories to the ground and also explodes upon impact. At this point a train comes out of the side of a building; this seems hard to believe since they are in the middle of the city surrounded by cafes and such. But the train allows McLeod to squeeze Hitman #1's head beneath the train cutting his head off. This allows McLeod to get his immortal powers back and little lightning rods and sparklers are at work all over the set. The entire city block then explodes. At this point an 18-wheeler comes barreling onto the scene, this time from the middle of a building. It also explodes right in front of McLeod. McLeod is enveloped in flames, but alas! He emerges from the flames like the Terminator 3000 in Terminator 2, completely unscathed. He is young again, revitalized and his clothes aren't even burnt. His clothes are also immortal you see. You see?? Come on, don't you see?? Hitman #2 comes floating by apparently flying but I think it's really a rented muppet from the Frank Oz factory, probably Grover with a silver uniform and a Phyllis Diller wig on, tied to some 12 gauge fishing line. McLeod ducks, whereupon he pulls a rope out of his ass and beheads Hitman #2, whose headless carcass rams into a power transformer which is actually located on the sidewalk. They don't even put power transformers on sidewalks, do they? Maybe in Japan. Lucy then emerges from a Dixie dumpster and embraces McLeod. Within 5 seconds he tells her he is immortal and they fall in love. This scene really shows you where the minds of the people who made this movie are. Not only do they fall in love, but they start having sex as well. They don't go to the car; they don't go to a hotel room. McLeod pulls his pants down, her dress up, and they do it right in the middle of the street where everything exploded about 8 seconds ago. But the strange thing is that the area where everything just exploded is completely undamaged now, there is absolutely no one else around, it's like nothing ever happened as they hump in the street. This scene lasts less than ten seconds. You'd think if you had 500 years experience that you could last longer than that.

Now for the other special scene: This scene is so very special that it deserves a special name, "The Highlander 2: Katana Subway Scene". A special name indeed. General Katana is displeased that his hit men haven't finished McLeod and decides to do it himself, mumbling complaints about how hard it is to find good help these days. So, he transports through time from Zeist to Earth and upon arrival does a head dive, he literally does a head dive, bores into the ground and arrives inside of a moving subway train. This character is not one of the most ridiculous, implausibly diabolical evil villains I've ever seen, he is in fact the most ridiculous, implausible, diabolically evil villain ever conceived, period! He looks like a suburban goth-boy mall rat who wears one of those black ankle-length trench coat/dusters and has the same hairdo as Vincent from the Beauty and the Beast TV show and goes around with a perpetual evil grin, accompanied by an evil chuckle, that reminds me of the little bad guy from "The Warriors" (Warriors, come out and play-ay!). I could kick this guy's ass with both arms tied behind my back. Katana's having a big time, apparently he loves trains and he's grinning like Mayor McCheese at the fact that he's fixing to take over this subway. He's the kind of evil villain who wants to take over the universe but will also take time to cuff people on the back side of their neck as he walks down the aisle of the subway like a high school bully. What's he gonna do next? Go to the local elementary school and steal some kid's lunch money.

Katana does in fact take over the train and this is when the movie takes a turn and becomes, well, rather silly believe it or not. Katana puts the pedal to the metal and in about 5 seconds time the subway train is chugging at a whopping 672 mph. I'm not making this up. Can you believe what we'll be capable of in the future? I mean subways are usually plotted throughout the city so that they average a stop every mile to mile. From stop to stop, given that most subways travel around 45 mph, the average travel time is about 45-50 seconds. Forget about it, on these subways its 5 seconds. I can imagine the advertisements to come: "Would you like to knock 40 seconds off your stop to stop subway travel? Are you tired of being 18 seconds late to your workplace? Got a funeral to rush to? You wanna knock 37 seconds off your next travel time to the grocery store? Done! You need to get to that hemorrhoid surgery and how? Done! We're City Subway Services and our subways go 672 mph all night long." Well it's not so fun when Katana's in charge. During this ride there are no less than 4 explosions. There are g-forces so strong it forces passengers into the sides and into the backs of the compartments causing death and mayhem. In one shot, a man's face explodes due to the massive g-force of traveling 672 mph. I couldn't figure out why he was the only one whose head exploded, when nobody else's around him did. I paused the movie to see the effects of the exploding head. I laughed for a really long, long time, my stomach started hurting and the pause turned into full stop as I surpassed the 5 minute pause length. I recommend you do the same...



... In the end, the train crashes into a brick wall at the end of the line and skids for, umm, about 20 feet onto a city street and comes to a stop. Katana disembarks and continues spreading mayhem. First of all, if a subway train is traveling 672 mph and crashes into a brick wall, how many feet would it travel before coming to a stop? Would it be 20 or longer? Raise your hand if you think it would be longer. Second of all, why the hell are subways on street level?

This movie is a site to behold inspiring awe and rancor simultaneously. There's not a single span of 5 seconds of this movie that doesn't suck. There's not one good line. Not one good scene. Even McLeod's hairdo is bad. The costumes are bad, the camerawork is bad, the special effects are laughable; the presence of Sean Connery is even repugnant. It's so horribly directed that Connery's fish out of water character comes off as nothing more than an annoying anachronism. It's little things. This character (I thought he was killed anyway in the first movie, but moving on) is from Zeist, a planet of immortals with technology capable of constructing super-weapons, capable of constructing time-travel machines, yet when he arrives on Earth he is absolutely amazed at the site of a television. It doesn't help to watch a fast-motion vignette of him getting a tailor-made suit to the tune of the William Tell Overture either. There are so many continuity errors, so many choppy irrelevant scenes, and so many unexplainable set props. Why would you place a large fan vertically against a window? Why would you then place the fan on the outside of the window? And there are a hundred more things like that. I absolutely despise this movie, yet you have to watch this movie. It's absolutely the worst movie ever made! It's unbelievable that it ever made it to any post-production phase whatsoever. What were people involved with this movie thinking? Who allowed this to happen? Why? Why? Why?