HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER - REVIEW


Making a worse sequel than Highlander 2 was always going to be a challenge and although they do try very hard here to indeed achieve this nirvana of cinematic assness, it just falls short and ends up being mostly dull.

The film starts off pretty much exactly like Conan The Barbarian: bad guys on horses with silly helmets burning down a village, Mako, montages...literally all that's missing is Basil Poledouris's score. Then the nonsense inevitably begins as a statue inexplicably turns its head and opens its eyes, we cut to the present then back to 18th century France for some reason, we're given an odd, super long gratuitous sex scene and the list goes on.

That said, the film at the very least acknowledges the shortcomings of its predecessor as it doesn't even attempt to fix anything and just never mentions it. We are shown bits from the first film so we can only assume either the action is taking place in between 1 and 2 or they're just pretending like The Quickening never happened. Either way: that's fine by me. As long as we're on Earth...

The problem with this one? Apart from its obvious silliness and unfathomably bad acting? It's just boring. The film blatantly was going for a more straight-forward approach after the over-ambitious mess the first sequel created but in doing so, by playing it safe, the film loses its urgency and just fails to be memorable in any way. This is the sequel no-one ever remembers and it's easy to see why: it's not terrible but its blandness makes it almost transparent.

Overall, The Sorcerer is not a good film by any standards but compared to its predecessor it is miles ahead. Essentially, this is what Highlander 2 should have been, a duller, crappier retread of the first film but at least, at LEAST, alien-free! I wouldn't urge you to go out of your way to see Highlander III but if you liked the first one and hated the second one, this fits right in the middle (well, lower middle) and when you've seen the further sequels, it's a breath of fresh(ish) air.

Fair attempt but still not getting it, guys.

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