Highlander III: The Sorcerer

Lacking both the confused audacity present in any version of The Quickening as well as the pure, kinetic, energy of the original Highlander, Andrew Morahan's Highlander III: The Sorcerer (viewed here in a European theatrical cut, also known as Highlander 3: Die Legende, that includes a number of expanded sex scenes when compared to the US cinema release) settles for the dilatory pace of a televised police procedural. Although Sorcerer, like the two films before it, delves into the memories of these battling immortals, these recollections are used to prop up present-day elements rather than delve into the private mental space of someone who, despite living for centuries, hasn't yet been able to die. Sorcerer is a much more ordinary film then, one built out of pure exposition. Building blocks are dutifully doled out alongside handsome music video imagery to serve a wistful, erotic thriller level, plot. It's an approach distinct from (but inferior to) the frazzled, kaleidoscopic, fragments that electrified Russell Mulcahy's swaggering rock operas. 

Christopher Lambert's Connor MacLeod and Mario Van Peebles' Kane are arranged as competing monsters in an investigation that naturally centres - but doesn't delve too deeply into - Deborah Kara Unger's Dr Johnson, a famous archaeologist puzzling through the discovery of an obscure tartan pattern within a Japanese historical site. MacLeod maintains an amiable but strangely distant presence - essentially pottering around until he's able to re-forge his broken sword - while Peebles, despite his character's pointedly Biblical name and a look best described as bubble money barbarian, isn't asked to do much more than growl his way through a Clancy Brown impression. Neither competitor has much in the way of an interior motor then. This pervasive sense of detachment is exacerbated in MacLeod's case by the crude fixes employed to nudge him towards something recognisably human. As well as a supernatural connection to what we presume is one of Dr Johnson's previous lives, MacLeod now also has an adopted pre-teen son who, really, only makes us wonder whatever happened to Rachel, the little girl MacLeod rescued from occupied Europe who grew up to be the executor of his vast estate?