Highlander - Endgame [VHS] [2000]

The acting is superb with some great performances from Lambert, Paul and Donnie Yen. The camerawork is also very cleverly worked as are the special effects. It is obvious that a lot of time was spent on producing this film.

The reason for this film is to bring to an end Christopher Lambert's reign as the Highlander, and pave the way for Adrian Paul to carry the torch. As with the first film we see the timeline flicking from present day to previous chapters in the life of Connor and Duncan McLeod. The film shows us how Duncan was found by Connor, and also explains how people 'become' immortal. This useful as the film does explain one or two loose-ends from the original.

Unfortunately, I think that a lot of the romance of the first film has gone, with the current directors preferring instead to make the film more action based and a lot 'darker' than the original. The film, however, is still great and a definate must see.

Incidentally it is nice to see a proper title for this latest film, numbering films is boring and unimaginative. Lack of imagination is not a problem here, there is romance, pathos, danger and spectacle in this film, all served with a certain amount of panache and style. Much of the latter two qualities comes from both Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert, who make their characters totally believable.

Christopher Lambert does a fine job of portraying the down side of immortality, the unending loss of friends and lovers, mortal and immortal, his decision on how to best defeat Kell is convincingly and movingly portrayed. Adrian Paul is equally convincing as a somewhat tortured Duncan, tormented by thoughts of Kate/Faith and the mistake he made regarding her.

The appearances of Peter Wingfield and Jim Byrnes are far too brief and more could have been made of them. (Incidentally, the writer's assumption that all viewers will know why these two would take such risks to help Duncan, is flawed).

Kell played by Bruce Payne is a mesmerising and charismatic villain and a worthy opponent of both Highlanders. Lisa Barbuscia as Kate/Faith is a good actress and a strong female presence in an essentially male dominated film.

That all said there are problems with this film, 1. Continuity with the series, it is clearly stated there, that A: Duncan never married and B: Immortals even whilst living their Pre-immortal lives cannot have children, these are silly mistakes and should have been avoided. Writers of screenplays that follow popular series, should do their homework properly. The other problem is there was very little lightness in this script, the series dealt with many different themes and some of these were quite dark and intense, but a large part of its charm was the humour shown both by the characters and the situations they occasionally found themselves in. There was very little humour in Endgame and a great deal of navel searching, this made the film a little ponderous in places, but I must admit that despite these criticisms I did enjoy the film and would like to see more, perhaps the writer(s) next time around will ask for more input from the actor who actually knows the character best and what his reactions are likely to be in any given situation.