“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
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By Matthew Essary (Twitter: @WheelsCritic)
It’s been said before but it bears repeating; the 1986 action fantasy film HIGHLANDER should have never had sequels. The film told a perfectly self-contained story of immortal swordsmen battling through time in a predestined contest until only one remained. The very premise of it makes it something that actively works against continuing the story. The first film ends with the character of Connor MacLeod, the titular “highlander”, as the final immortal; having gained powers to unite humanity in peace and also the ability to simply grow old and die like everyone else.
There are four direct sequels to it and three spin-off TV series. It almost reads like a punchline to a joke, doesn’t it? This strange, little movie with a definitive end gets a sprawling franchise that lasts for decades. While all of what came after the original film either tries to retcon or just completely ignore the ending, they all did so in very different ways. Some of the sequels tried radical reinventions of the concept (Parts 2 and 5) others tried to quietly reboot the franchise (Parts 3 and 4). All of them though were met with indifference at best and outright hostility at worst.
When genre fans think of terrible film franchises, the HIGHLANDER films invariably come to mind. There is one film in the series I haven’t mentioned yet though. It isn’t really a direct sequel and it isn’t exactly a reboot either. What it is however is the best film to carry the HIGHLANDER name since the original. I’m referring to the 2007 animated film, HIGHLANDER: THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE.
Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the man behind such beloved video store anime classics as NINJA SCROLL and WICKED CITY and written by David Abramowitz, who penned many episodes of the well-regarded HIGHLANDER syndicated television show; THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE takes place in a post-apocalyptic New York where most of the population has been wiped out. This is briefly set up by an opening text screen reminiscent of the 1986 original:
“After a century of terrorism and global warming, the earth has fallen into chaos and decay. Nations have been replaced by city states, armed fortresses ruled by would-be kings and demagogues. Life is cheap and death comes easy… save for some.”
The story then opens with a sweeping view of a now desolated New York with only a single golden tower in the center of the city seeming to hold any sense of civilization. Heading towards the city is a solitary figure in a boat, draped in a billowing trench coat, with a samurai sword resting across his lap. This is our protagonist, Colin MacLeod.
When he tries to enter the city, we as the audience get our first taste of how broad the film will go. Colin encounters a camp of mutated scavengers outside the city’s defenses and even though he attempts to pass through without conflict, there is an immortal among them who challenges Colin to a duel citing the simple fact that “there can be only one” in the end. He then charges at our hero not with a sword but with a ridiculously oversized chainsaw! Colin, of course, quickly dispatches the challenger and the animation on display in their fight scene is simply beautiful. They leap at each other like superheroes and their duel is intricate and fluid. It’s clear from this sequence that the film was no mere attempt to cash in on a well-recognized brand.
After this opening encounter Colin moves on to the city, concerned only with his quest to find and kill an immortal named “Marcus Octavius”. Octavius, centuries ago in the times of Ancient Rome, quelled a slave uprising led by our hero that left Colin’s people and his beloved wife, Deborah, dead. After discovering his own immortality in a failed assassination attempt against Octavius, Colin vowed to kill the man who murdered his beloved no matter how long it took. Throughout SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE we see several of Colin’s failed attempts to get at Octavius. They clash in feudal Japan, the highlands of Medieval Scotland (this is where Colin is given the name that directly ties the film into the rest in the franchise), and, in the most inventive sequence, during a World War 2 aerial dog fight that find them squaring off on the wing of a bomber plane mid-flight. Telling this story with animation allows the film to feel epic without limitation and with a story that spans thousands of years and numerous locations that is a necessity.
Of course, we learn that Octavius is now ruling over the New York wasteland from the golden tower at its center and anyone who opposes him has been driven into hiding underneath the city. Colin is approached by the rebelling forces for help, but he is single minded in his desire to simply avenge his lost love. It isn’t until he realizes that one of the rebels, Dahlia, is the reincarnation of Deborah’s spirit (it IS an anime after all) that he agrees to help them with their fight. What follows is a battle between the rebels and Octavius’s army that sees Colin slice through robot sentries and fascist soldiers alike on his way to a final, thrilling one on one confrontation with the man who destroyed his world.
What SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE does so well that the HIGHLANDER sequels fail at is that it keeps the story, despite its ambitious setting, deeply personal. It’s not about a conflict to save humanity. It’s not even about the eternal struggle between immortals. It’s about simply grief and revenge. The background of the HIGHLANDER mythos and the bleak future in which the story takes place are just there to add flavor to that simple idea.
You see, even after Colin agrees to help the rebels fight, he is still mostly concerned with just taking Octavius’s head off his shoulders. Revenge is all he’s been thinking about for centuries. It’s tragic in a way. His grief and hatred are all that he has focused on while Octavius has spent his immortal life perfecting himself through wealth, art, music, and knowledge. Octavius mocks Colin for this throughout the film calling him a simple “savage”. Colin could have spent his abundant life making himself or the world better but “the search for vengeance” just wouldn’t allow for that.
The nuance on display here is something that is missing from all but the original film. The filmmakers give the audience all the action, fantasy, romance, and melodrama they expect from the HIGHLANDER franchise while never once betraying the core concepts that it’s built on. They do all this while introducing a fantastical new setting for the story to take place in. They struck the perfect balance of honoring what works in HIGHLANDER while pushing it forward with new ideas.
That’s not to say THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE is without flaws though. It has incredibly stilted voice acting and the dialogue is often obvious and clunky. The female characters are overly sexualized for no discernible reason (Dalhia is a prostitute and Octavius’s villainous second-in-command, “Kyala” is a scantily clad Japanese woman who is aroused by murder). There are also things typical of anime, like a precocious child sidekick, a magical old spirit who gives sage-like advice to our hero throughout the story, and giant mecha-like tanks that seem to be there just because the film is an anime.
The good on display here though far outweighs the bad. HIGHLANDER: THE SEARCH FOR VENGEANCE is an easy recommendation for fans of the franchise who have grown weary of all the subpar installments over the years. It shows that as long as you stay true to the base concepts of the franchise, introduce new compelling ideas that don’t contradict those concepts, and invest the story with personal, relatable motivations that a quality sequel can be added to any series no matter how unlikely the continuation may seem.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch