Never in the field of human endeavour has there been an act of such instrumental, destructive, diabolical folly as this justifiably reviled, quasi-sequel to the original 1986 fantasy in which immortal warriors duelled throughout the ages until one remained. Yes, its Highlander II - a film so bad that Robert Mugabe refused to show it to white farmers on the grounds that it would be "exceptionally cruel". Needing to grasp on to a strand of optimism, perhaps only the thickness of a human hair, I long ago decided that the film existed purely as a textbook demonstration for future filmmakers on how not to make a successful sequel to a hit movie. This theory alone explains the cynicism on screen and the ham-fisted, slapdash, car-crash handling of the material. Don't misunderstand; I'm not saying this thing is poor - poor would be generous praise for a Frankenstein fantasy in which all the invention, both visual and conceptual, inherent in the first film's appeal is frittered to nothing. In fact, the totality of the words already used are only the merest fraction of those required to accurately portray the near total devastation that washed over me as I sat through it (I'm ashamed to say not for the only time) on a stormy night 14 years ago. Russell Mulchay deserves to be poisoned and broad beaten with a tent pole in the male ruminations for his decision to helm the whole sorry affair and grind his original good work to dust. It hardly needs saying but the problem for anyone scripting a Highlander II is that Highlander I concluded business comprehensively with no outlet for a second episode. To get around this the makers of The Quickening simply decided to ditch the back-story of the original film and invent a new one which would enable them to write around the fact that all the immortals, bar M.Lambert were, not unlike themselves, dead from the neck up. So although McCloud was originally born in Scotland and Ramierez in er, Egypt, now they were aliens from a planet called Zeist; handy, because this new ancestry meant that all that was needed to reengergise the concept was that another visitor showed up on Earth and the games can begin again. To fully appreciate how awful an idea this is you need only imagine a Star Wars sequel in which the action is suddenly set in present day Earth for reasons of plot convenience or a second instalment of Titanic in which it's revealed that Jack and Rose are actually time-travellers and are thus able to prevent the disaster and save all their friends. Thus Highlander II is effectively the one line joke in the Player in which the writer of the Graduate pitches the terrible sequel writ large and for real. We can only imagine that the owners of the original film were desperate for more because nothing but desperation could possibly explain how this made it to the screen. If blame were slurry and required apportioning by EU agricultural directive then you'd need roughly 6 tankers worth, each containing somewhere in the region of 40,000 tonnes. The shame of Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert is palpable and everyone who felt any enjoyment during this picture is consciously and deliberately complicit in its evil work. As a purely commercial enterprise with no respect or consideration for the 1st film or its fans, we can only hope that all involved lost millions and that having lost their deposit they were forced to sell themselves into sexual slavery. Highlander III, not exactly itself a great sequel, ignored this one completely as ironically it left no outlet for a third episode but it too was a cynical cash-in and could only continue the first film by ignoring its ending whereas the forth in the series simply didn't bother with the first film at all, opting instead to go with the spin-off T.V series. That's the way the rot spread but here's where it started - now please Hollywood...never again.
Review of Highlander II: The Quickening
