Movie Review: 'Highlander: Endgame'

Those in the cult will be thrilled that in Highlander: Endgame, Connor MacLeod (Christopher Lambert, weather-beaten star of the movie franchise dating back to 1986) and his fellow clansman Duncan MacLeod (Adrian Paul, beetle-browed star of the syndicated-TV franchise dating back to 1993) engage in a vein- popping showdown to see which immortal will bump off the other, thereby achieving a quickening of multiorgasmic proportions.

Those who aren’t in the cult of this popular genre fantasy not only won’t understand what the previous sentence is about, but may also wonder what’s so great about perpetual life if it entails shlepping from one badly lit, cheesily art-directed, peat bog-colored century to another, spouting hollow dialogue like ”Honor’s not in the weapon — it’s in the man.” This latest chapter in the saga of Scottish superheroes (their clan banner might read ”Ageless Since 1518!”) and their ongoing, time-shifting, sword-clanging, martial arts-oriented battles finds the two brethren up against the evil Jacob Kell (Bruce Payne), a renegade immortal.

Kell’s most potent weapon, it turns out, isn’t his cutlery. It’s the hysterical, haute-villain inflections with which Payne declaims very, very, very long speeches about how difficult it is to stick around, what with ”the endless, numbing sameness of it all.”

Isn’t that the everlasting truth. D+