Highlander: The Source

I loved the Highlander series. I loved the first Highlander movie. But holy crap, this movie was terrible.

It has the acting, effects and plot of a made-for-TV Sci Fi channel movie (oh wait...). Everything about the film stunk of terrible quality. It was actually kind of sad to see Paul and the Highlander franchise in general in so bad of a continuation. Nearly every character mailed it in and sleepwalked through their characters. The rest played so over-the-top that you want to hold your head in your hands and groan. And, once again, the Highlander writers find another half-assed reason to make another movie (the prize in the last movie? no no no, that wasn't the REAL prize, THIS is the real prize.).

If you're a Highlander fan, don't even watch this. It butchers that which you love.

The bewigged, face lifted, slimmer and worked out, but, still so very handsome, Adrian Paul is back as the Highlander. This junk is horrible. Please, Adrian, the Highlander was great and superlative as a television series, but the Highlander movies (Endgame) and The Source fail, and fail miserably. Let them die. Do no more. I think he got the idea now from the reviews of The Source. This concoction was hard to watch. A murky, dark movie, and dark meaning everything looked as if it were shot in the middle of the night. Acting was awful---some weird plot to find the source--the origin--of the immortals. Adrian walks his way throughout the movie. He knew it was crap. He looks great with his new wig and face lift and slimmer than ever, but this is way beneath his talents. A ridiculous movie with so much screaming and yelling and fighting, it makes no sense. Takes place in some future world with trite sets and some maniac wearing a half helmet acting as a guardian, but to what, I have no clue. The movie has no purpose, no direction. It was awful.

What went right with the Highlander TV series starring Adrian Paul? First it was the main protagonist that really got into the role of the highlander, second it was the fact it it had very good swordplay and martial arts action and third it was those well done flashbacks into history, that showed many different time-lines and presented conflicts that lasted for centuries...

So, what is wrong with this movie? All the things stated above are missing...Yes we have Duncan , Mythos and Dawson but the script is really poor, the main villain is ridiculous , there are no flashbacks no swordplay whatsoever. All we get is a clown jumping around talking gibberish (the so-called guardian) and a crappy story about the "legendary" source.

The direction tries to seem cool but it ends up rather boring, and the acting is poor. Of course I wasn't expecting any great acting or imaginative direction but at least I was expecting some believable special effects...I didn't get those either the SFX are bad and uninventive. Obviously the movie hasn't got a big budget but it would have been adequate if it was used properly and with a story that didn't involve guardians with superpowers and other cosmic forces.

In the end it just feels sad that the Highlander franchise probably ends with such a bad movie. It's even worse than "Endgame" and that is really an achievement. Adrian Paul isn't much of an actor but give him a Katana and let him do his martial stuff and he'll work some magic. Unfortunately in this movie he does nothing of the above so in the and we get nothing , not even a good action scene...

Highlander fans - there simply are very few ways to enjoy this. Aside from totally ignoring the mythology of both the films and the series, the fight scenes were either poorly choreographed, poorly shot, or both. There are no flashbacks in a film that desperately needed some sort of underlying sub-plot and/or simple explanation of the main plot. The dialogue is cheesy, not one of the characters approaches anything like three-dimensionality (other than the recurring trio from the series - and that's only by virtue of fans' past experience with them), and there is no real motivation given for any of them aside from lame "having visions" plot.

Like the last Highlander film that attempted a futuristic setting, this one misses everything that made the first film and the series great. And unlike Highlander 2, the vision of the future here is never really explained and doesn't make a great deal of sense.

They should have stuck with the monkey and the airplane. (See the trivia section.) I can't even really say that if you aren't a Highlander fan it might be enjoyable - because even then it didn't make a lot of sense. I saw it, so I can't un-see it, but if you haven't spare yourself the train wreck.

I loved the first Highlander movie, loved the series, and have found every movie after the first to be pretty awful - but I watch them anyway, hoping against hope that they'll prove me wrong. I thought it couldn't get any worse than Highlander: Endgame, but I was very much mistaken. This is just a terrible movie - like watching a train wreck.

If they didn't destroy continuity in every movie and rewrite the history of the Highlander universe, it might be bearable. Like every other Highlander movie, this one acts like nothing came before it and nothing about it makes sense - it's an insult to the intelligence of the fans. And we have to suffer through yet another half-witted attempt to re-invent the source of immortality and what happens if "there can be only one." The post-apocalyptic world is just plain dark and dreary. Endgame was sort of heading in that direction - it was significantly more world-weary and tattered than the world of the series. However, The Source just plain doesn't make sense. For the world to have gotten in this condition, more than a few years would have to have passed, and Joe Dawson should look more than a couple of years older - by rights the character should have been dead before this movie takes place. But hey, I guess they figure we can't add either.

The fight scenes are terrible - the speeded-up special effects destroy the fun of the fight scenes, and you always expect one decent sword-fighting scene in a Highlander movie - not this one! If I had realized how bad this was going to be, I could have resigned myself to ogling Methos for a couple of hours. This movie is so bad even *that* isn't enjoyable. If I had seen this in a movie theater I'd have wanted my money back. As it is, I want back the time I wasted watching this dreck.

I'm giving up Highlander movies for good. As far as I'm concerned, There Can Be Only One Highlander Movie - and this isn't it.