My generation grew up with this movie. Shown way back in 1986, featuring an uprising star cum actor in Christopher Lambert. He shot to fame when he played the Tarzan the Lord of Greystoke sometime in 1984. Then came this Highlander movie, which was a surprise hit that spawned a lot of sequels and TV series.
The film has a great story. Of a Highlander named Connor Macleod who lived in the dark ages who died during one of the clan wars and miraculously lived. That instead of being hailed as miracle, he was branded as evil thus banished from his village. He left with a heavy heart and lived alone until he met a partner whom he shared his remaining (or so he thought) life with her.
Then comes in a famous actor in Sean Connery, playing Ramirez. They were the same breed he says. The ones who would not die. Ramirez explains that whatever happens to them, they simply won't die, except for decapitation, they would not age nor die. Even with this gift though comes a price. They can't have children, they see their love ones die in their arms due to old age and in the end, the quickening will happen eventually.
Quickening is what they call when all of them who will not die (or who's left by that time) will be drawn to an area where they will all kill each other off until just one remains. Along the film, when they do kill their kind, they somehow absorb that dead's powers so to speak. So those left during the quickening "should" we say have amassed a great deal of power from those they have killed off early on.
The winner or the one was promised to have the great power of all and become human in the end. An immortal wanting to be mortal. That is how life is made precious by this film, of how mortality that sometimes we are now aware of, is so important to Connor and his kind.
Watching the film nowadays will bring nostalgia to Feelinnials like me, but cheesy to millennials. The movie is of an era of skin tight leather pants and long hair for men, with women wearing shoulder pads and voluminous hair. The disco era reigns supreme so you will snicker at some of their fashion sense here. Story flows well here but somehow we have misgivings with the style of direction here. Angle shots are not your usual so you will find this being B grade movie. But thanks to a great story focus, of an immortal, this alone pushed the movie to cult status.
A bootleg version of the movie is being shown in YouTube (as of this post) so better watch it before someone reports it. LOL. Maybe Amazon Prime is showing this, as we can't find this one on Netflix.
