Subject: REVIEW: HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION

From: [email-masked] (John Walker)
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 21:33:43 GMT

HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION
		       A film review by John Walker
			Copyright 1995 John Walker

In brief: If you don't go in with any great expectations, I think
     you'll find that HIGHLANDER 3 is a perfectly adequate
     action-adventure flick.  It doesn't dawdle, and it has some really
     neat settings, a suitably slimy villain, and a fair number of
     satisfying adventure ideas.

Unfortunately, it seems to be lacking whatever "something" it would
     take to get me running back for a second viewing.  A cult film, I
     don't think it will be.  But because I found it pleasant, it
     *does* give me occasion to think about what's missing.

                             <<The story>>

     We have here an immortal hero, Connor MacLeod (Christopher
Lambert).  He's sitting at the feet of an immortal wizard, Nokono
(Mako) in the wizard's cave in 16th-century Japan.  Out in the snow is
riding an immortal villain, Kane (Mario Van Peebles), with two immortal
henchmen, to off the wizard and the hero.  Specifically, he intends to
decapitate them.  If he does so, he gets the power of his victim.  In
this flick, that's just part of the immortals business.  And
decapitation, by the bye, seems to be the only way to kill these
immortals--although except for a really impressive regenerative
ability, they're not much stronger or brighter than average.

     The really big thing about these immortals, however, is that
"There can only be one".  There can be a number of players on the field
for a long time, but ultimately the immortals game is *not* a win-win
situation.  MacLeod may be unwilling to off Nokono to improve his
position, but Kane is, after all, a villain, and under no such
restraint.

     In the ensuing contretemps, the cave falls in on the villain and
henchmen, but the hero escapes.

     Now it's the present, and an Important and Controversial
Archaeologist, Alex Johnson (Deborah Unger) is called to the
construction site for a big high-tech project in Japan.  Guess where it
is!  They know it's some sort of archaeological site, and she's there
because the local archaeologists have brought her in as their big gun
against the business types who just want to get their plant built.
Needless to say, her thing is to use legends and stuff as clues to
archaeology.  She only needs to touch down for a minute before she
thinks of Nokono and his cave.

     While the decision makers are fretting over the contest between
antiquities and economics, things are rumbling downstairs.

     Kane _et al._ emerge.  Being cooped up for 400 years has not made
them any nicer or fonder of MacLeod, and they set out to complete
unfinished business.

     On the other side of the world, MacLeod set up digs a few years
ago near Marrakech, Morocco.  He has a nice life and an adopted son,
John (Gabriel Kakon).  By means we needn't discuss here, MacLeod
realizes that the game is afoot, and decamps for New York City (site of
HIGHLANDER 2 ten years before, by the way).  In New York, the trio will
meet.  And, oh, did I note that Alex is a dead ringer for Sarah, a
former love of MacLeod's from the 1700s?  Well, she is.

     So, do you have it all set up?  It's simple arithmetic, really.
Number of immortals in movie equals "n".  Number of immortals at end of
movie who have heads still affixed cannot exceed n - (n - 1).  Or from
the other perspective, decapitations cannot be less than n - 1.  Is
that a formula for an action-adventure, or what?

                            <<The acting>>

     First, let it be noted that I never saw HIGHLANDER 1 or 2.
HIGHLANDER 1 seems to have been rather well liked, HIGHLANDER 2
frequently denounced as a dog having nothing to do with HIGHLANDER 1.
In HIGHLANDER 3, I get the feeling that the filmmakers have tried to
put in some stuff to make the two previous flicks all part of the same
story/universe.  But for me, I have to take HIGHLANDER 3 on its own.

     And we might as well start with acting, since my main question
that might be answered by the the other two films could also be an
acting problem.  In the opening scenes, MacLeod seems almost a bit
childlike.  Either that, or a bit of a wimp.  In the later scenes,
neither trait shows up.  Acting?  Or a reference to previous history?
I don't know.

     For those of you who have never seen Christopher Lambert, by the
way, he speaks with an unplaceable European accent.  For fantasy's
sake, someone might say that it's how a native Gaelic speaker from the
1500s might speak English.  But in a brief flashback to those days, his
burr didn't sound too unusual.  I assume Lambert is following in the
Schwartzenegger and Van Damme tradition.  (We may even come to *expect*
adventure heroes to speak with foreign accents!)

     Van Peebles, of course, has no problems with accents.  And
depending on your taste, he may be reason alone to see or avoid
HIGHLANDER 3.  His Kane is more slimy than sinister, more creepy than
cold, not a genuinely serious tyrant or monster.  Van Peebles plays him
with an inner core of silliness.  It's almost like he wants to stop and
demand that the audience boo and hiss when he comes on stage.  Then he
can preen himself on our hostility.

     For her part, Unger carries off the Alex/Sarah role nicely.  She's
attractive, assertive, and the stuff modern audiences presumably
expect.  But she's not really a player in the action.  Those roles are
for immortals.  Even the police detective, Lt. Stenn (Martin Neufeld),
who is trying to pin unlawful-decapitation raps on MacLeod going back
to HIGHLANDER 2, is really a cipher, having little impact on the action
of the film.

                         <<The strong points>>

     Al right, having said that the detective has little affect on the
action, we can move to the main virtue of HIGHLANDER 3 as an adventure:
it *moves*.  I wasn't bored; I wasn't wondering when they were going to
get something done so that we could get back to the real stuff.  There
are flashbacks to MacLeod's affair with Alex's double in the 1700s;
there are scenes where MacLeod and Alex size one another up; but they
didn't bother me.  (Although they may have contributed to a lack of
focus.)

     For those of you turned off by mindless gore, by the way, I
thought the decapitations were very well handled.  Can I say, extremely
tasteful beheadings?  Depicting the events straightforwardly, but not
intended to get folks to upchuck.

     Similarly, the special effects were worked in nicely.  It didn't
look like just a lot of money spent to impress the rubes.  For
instance, when an immortal kills another, he is surrounded by sort of
swirling light currents, the dead body levitates, etc.  Like the
decapitations, nicely done, not vulgar or ostentatious.

     True, there were improbabilities piled on improbabilities--not
the least of which being *everything* about Alex.  But they were
*useful* improbabilities--they moved the action along.

     Nonetheless, while I'm willing to give a action flick its
improbabilities, I figure it's sloppy on the filmmakers' part if they
overdo it.  And HIGHLANDER 3 strikes me as having overdone it.  There
were at least a couple of major points where I was thinking to a
character that "This is a demonstrably uncool move on *your* part,
neighbor."

     But, like I say, I can be forgiving on mere irrationality--so
long as the film gives me something in return.  And HIGHLANDER 3 shows
glimmers of having something in stock, but someone is too lazy or
unimaginative to bring it all out.

     I don't know who exactly to blame, but the screenplay was by Paul
Ohl, the story by William Panzer and Brad Mirman.  In all this, also,
you can try to decide to what extent director Andy Morahan should take
credit or blame.

                    <<And the letdowns--action>>

     Now, if you're looking for reasons why HIGHLANDER 3 is less
successful than it might be, some of you might think of those tasteful
decapitations.  I mean, isn't "action-adventure" supposed to be a
euphemism for gore-flick?

     Well, the critics frequently act as if "action equals gore", and
action flicks *do* seem to have a cavalier attitude towards
dismemberment, disembowelment, and other means of egress from this vale
of tears.  But I don't think that action films or action fans *demand*
it.  What I think is necessary is propulsion, movement--in other
words, action films need *action*.  (Gee, how surprising!)  Spectacular
killings are a lazy way of achieving or imitating action.

     HIGHLANDER 3 has movement, yes, but it didn't strike me as *going*
anywhere.  We know we need a big fight between Kane and MacLeod, but
the stuff on the way seems only stuff on the way.  There's little build
of events that tie things together with the climax crowning it all.
One doesn't *lead* to another in HIGHLANDER 3; instead, one thing
merely *follows* another.  It's just a sort of sparring.

     Now, I can't really figure out to demonstrate this weakness.  I
mean, the story does move nicely; it's a workmanlike job, so I can't
point to obvious gaffes; still less could I suggest corrections.

     But besides action, we also have to consider "adventure".  I
figure an action-adventure has to give me some neat ideas or events or
surroundings.  It has to give me something I want to imagine myself
doing, or something that is really fascinating even if negative somehow
(frightening, say).

     And in that respect, I can point to HIGHLANDER 3's scenery, its
backdrops.  There is *always* a nice background or setting throughout
the film.  A desert in Morocco, barren hills in Scotland, a plush
apartment in New York with windows on a cityscape, the high-tech plant
in Japan, a sort of surreal industrial facility for the climax.  Neat!
We've got the setting, now what *action* will take place there?  How am
I going to imagine myself being the *hero* in that neat, impressive
scene?

     But *most* of the time, the action doesn't use the "dramatic"
backgrounds.  It doesn't give me any feel of giants battling in a
more-than-ordinary world.  And there's nothing to give me some *idea*
or *emotion* to go along with the background, not for me, not for the
characters on screen.

                       <<Backgrounds and ideas>>

     Take a fairly important scene--where MacLeod and one of the
henchvillains are in a hospital laundry room.  It's a drying room with
sheets hanging everywhere, so they can't see each other.  (True, most
hospitals probably got rid of their drying rooms sometime during the
administration of Dwight Eisenhower, but I've agreed to overlook mere
practical impossibility.)

     Such a scene might be very high-tension if we were dealing, say,
with a kid, or someone really vulnerable.  We'd be trying to look
around every corner.  Where's the bad guy now?!

     But we've got an *immortal* here!  The *hero*!  Against a complete
no-name!  I'm sorry, dramatic tension is hard for me under such
circumstances.  All those nifty backgrounds--unfortunately, that's
all they are.

     Take the New York apartment in an apparently squalid neighborhood.
That's a pretty "archetypal" image--think of Fu Manchu.  Glamor and
power hidden in the slums.  But HIGHLANDER 3 doesn't do anything with
it.  It's just another place along the way.

     And it's the same with the other nifty backgrounds.  First, as
noted, I didn't feel much interaction between scenery and action.  But
second, they're all sorts of different scenery.  I didn't come a way
with any image that tied up the film for me.  It's like we do this
scene here, and then we do that scene there.  Nothing continues.
Nothing grows.

     To see how other people have handled something, think of the first
GHOSTBUSTERS.  They repeatedly showed the art-deco apartment building
where we *knew* something creepy was going on.  The building was always
highlighted against dark, stormy skies.  For more than a year after
seeing it, I would look up at certain apartment buildings, with the sky
and clouds behind them, and I'd experience the neat little thrill of
the GHOSTBUSTERS building.

     With neat backdrops all over, HIGHLANDER 3 gave me no such image.

     Is it that the filmmakers were just lazy?  Would it have been too
much work to tie together the dramatic background with the action of
the flick?  Would it have been too much work to throw in something to
show why someone *had* to do something or why they didn't *want* to do
something else?

                 <<Might this have been deliberate?>>

     In fact, though, something else *might* be going on--almost an
*anti*-action-adventure theme.  Suffice it to say that that with all
the wide-open possibilities, the fights all take place in constrained
circumstances--the cave and the drying room, for instance.  I can see
that they might have been chosen for emotional or symbolic or dramatic
purposes.  (For me, the cave is the most notable, and the most
successful scene for a fight.)

     But they're still all sort of close-in, sort of claustrophobic.
Is this larger-than-life?  Is this heroic?  Or is it some
shrink-influenced imagery?  Maybe it was trying to give some image of
descending into the dark corners of the psyche to engage in conflict.
If so, it was only half done--note that I said "sort of"
claustrophobic.

     In any event, at the end, it feels like everybody just gave up.
We get the climax, and then after a few minutes it ends, just *ends*.
I don't feel like doing a spoiler here, so all I can do is say that the
ending was for me incredibly unsatisfying.  I just sat there and said
"What?"  We went through the whole flick to get *this*!?

     The promos have said that this is the last HIGHLANDER, that
Lambert is "retiring" the MacLeod character.  If so, the ending is more
disappointing, because with all the questions it raised in my mind, at
least I could figure it was rational if it was leaving the field open
for HIGHLANDER 4.  (And there were other possible sequel threads left
untied, too.)

                   <<Between potential and actual>>

     Note, again, that I thought that this was a pleasant, enjoyable
flick.  It was workmanlike, smoothly done.  It didn't lag, it kept me
involved.

     Nonetheless, just by thinking about some of the potentials that
littered the landscape--the landscape itself, the backgrounds, being
collectively one of them--I can feel disappointed.

     In that light, I can disagree with but understand the vehemence
with which some people have panned HIGHLANDER 3.  (The reaction on
alt.cult-movies has *not* been generous!)

     On the basis of what HIGHLANDER 3 actually delivered to us, the
condemnations have been unfounded.  But if we think of the film's
*potential*, then the outrage is understandable.  We got a nice,
pleasant film.  The film itself indicates that we could have gotten a
*lot* more.

     John Walker
     [email-masked]