Film Review - Highlander 3: The Sorcerer (1995)

Highlander 3 – The Sorcerer ignores the 2nd Highlander film completely and tries to continue the story of Connor MacLeod from the clan MacLeod (Christopher Lambert) as he trekked to Japan to learn from the sorcerer Nakano (Mako) but an evil immortal named Kane (Mario Van Peebles) finds them and Nakano sacrifices himself to save MacLeod, Kane vows revenge against MacLeod and in the end, there can be only one.

I went into Highlander 3 with low expectations as while I loved the first Highlander film, the second was a disgrace so how could this be any worse?

Well, it actually was worse mainly because the story feels so god damn pointless and so much of it is just a rip off the first film from the use of the Scottish highlands to the detective character and even down to the love interest played by Deborah Kara Unger who just feels like a rehash of Brenda from the first film.

But my two biggest bug bears are these and I’ll go into those below:

First is Kane himself, frankly he just comes across as a clone of the Kurgan and sounding like one of Dr. Claw’s ancestors, I mean you could literally imagine him saying “I’ll get you next time MacLeod, NEXT TIME” and he’s not even threatening whereas Clancy Brown as the Kurgan was menacing and fearsome at the same time, he’s even worse than Michael Ironside was in number 2 and all he did was laugh manically for most of the movie.

The other is the splicing in of clips from the first Highlander film and like the use of the Queen songs in the 2nd film it feels like an insult as both of those things only serve to remind us of just how good the first Highlander really was, compared to both of these movies which are just pale pale shadows of the original.

Oh and lastly, the movie looks really cheap, at least the 2nd film had a pretty neat look to it with its swooping camera shots, big sets and an overall old fashioned look that is somewhat lost now in the digital age, here everything just looks tacky and cheap and boy is it noticeable after the great look of the first two films.

You know, throughout this movie they say “There can be Only One” but they no not its meaning, to say “There can be Only One” means that while immortals may team up to fight a common enemy in the end they must fight each other in order to progress to the time of the Gathering and fight for the Prize in which case well you get the idea, that line could also apply to this film series as well you get the idea and to repeat it would be just silly on my part but you should just rent the original Highlander from 86 and leave it at that as everything that came after is just frankly pointless, .5 out of 5.