Highlander (1986)

 "There can be only one!"

Everybody has really big films they haven't seen, even those of us who have blogged over five hundred. For me, Highlander was one of them until tonight, despite the fact that the '80s were the decade of my childhood.

It's extraordinarily good, of course; really well made with lavish production values but, far more importantly, a masterfully paced and structured script that takes a simple idea (superpowered immortals who duel for the "Prize") and executes it well in a more than usually thoughtful blockbuster. Oddly, it matters not that Lambert doesn't really shine as MacLeod; he's as good as he needs to be. He's outshined, of course, by genuine Scotsman Sean Connery who plays... a Spaniard, or an Egyptian, but certainly not a native of Caledonia. Yet Connery is perfect as Ramirez, Roxanne Clark is excellent as leading lady Brenda (still a young woman's name in 1986, apparently) and it's awesome to see Alan Police Squad North as a detective inspector, or whatever they're called in America.

There's some thoughtful meditation on what it must be like to be immortal, and see your loved ones age and die, but there's a deeper subtext to this that is perhaps not intended. Like Flash Gordon, this film is splendidly soundtracked by Queen, and the use of the song "Who Wants To Live Forever" these days evokes the AIDS pandemic of the time, especially as I saw this film in the wake of It's a Sin.

There is, I understand, much more fiction set in the intriguing world of this film. It is, however, satisfying as a whole. A superb '80s classic that I should have watched well before my forties.