Oh, the fighting scenes! Oh, the
fighting scenes. I, as any well-thinking fan of the
show, find the fighting scenes extremely important. That is partly why I found
H:E (for the extremely lazy) so disappointing.
Part of the show's charm was its production values; very polished, but never flashy. Unfortunately, one can not say the same of this movie. Oh Matrix, what hath ye wrought? Instead of brilliant choreography (the hallmark, in my opinion, of the series), the movie mixes exceedingly flashy cinematography with goofy one liners. The action is often hard to see, thanks to a mixture of disorienting camerawork and dim sets.
And the one-liners. Oh, the one-liners! Once again, Highlander, known for being able to mix the funny with the melodramatic with pleasurable results, has fallen out of proportion. The stereotypical nigger (and I mean this not as slur, only as an accurate representation of the most demeaning portrayal of African-Americans as ignorant and foolish {and also deserving of being bumped off by their masters in the first 20 minutes... whatever)} one might think of, saying "I told ya I wuz gonna cut'cha!" is a pretty good representation of the level of wit of these gems. And they don't stop. Even in the climatic and melodramatic final battle, our immortal hero can't refrain from ending it (and the movie) with a stupid, stupid, stupid one-liner. How the once-proud have fallen.