German Highlander: The Source Release

[beyondmediaonline.com]

According to a the German fansite http://www.highlander-chronik.de/, there is a BR release in planning: http://www.e-m-s.de/dvd.php?name=116568#

[damonous]

Originally Posted by beyondmediaonline.com

According to a the German fansite http://www.highlander-chronik.de/, there is a BR release in planning: http://www.e-m-s.de/dvd.php?name=116568#

Not only in-planning, but now released. I recently bought an import copy through XploitedCinema.com. Here's my review, for anyone interested...

MOVIE:
I bought this as a challenge. A close friend of mine has really been a fan over the years of the movies (especially the first) and the series. He had seen the version on Sci-Fi some months back and said that it was the absolute dog's doo. Of course, this just meant that I really wanted to see how bad it was ...and as long as I was going to: might as well in the BEST AV quality possible.

So, I kept waiting for this movie to 'suck'. 5 mins in; no suck. 10 mins; no suck. Probably for the first 20-30mins, I kept waiting for it to be dreadful, only to be pleasantly surprised. Another friend I watched it with (also a longtime Highlander fan) also thought it had pretty good merits.

It's also (at least for me) a 'relative thing': this is no Highlander 1. But, amidst the absolute muck that Highlander 2-4 were, I do rather believe this to be the most enjoyable & consistently well-acted sequel. Thankfully, the cast have all aged well (or should I say, not) and still look young enough to be "ageless" Immortals.

There are some divergences to the "Highlander myth" & cannon. But, no worse than any of the other sequels. And, certainly, no worse than the great "U-turn" that the series did with the Highlander legend, all for the expediency of making more money off the story. (Ummm, if Connor McLeod was "The One" in the first movie, and killed the last other Immortal to receive The Prize, .....then who the #@$# is this "Duncan" dude? ---Or the other 5,000,000 Immortals waiting to get their heads lopped-off every week for the 5-6 seasons that the show ran?)

VIDEO:
This is one of those Jekyl-and-Hyde transfers. After getting the ass-crap import foreign release of Dune on BD, I was beginning to think that the Europeans don't know how to encode HD properly from the first 20-30mins of the film. A lot of dark scenes and 'fuzzy-looking' video. I think some lightly-noticeable compression noise, too. However, about 30mins in, it seems that the transcoder technician must have woke-up and cranked the bitrate meter up; because from there onward I didn't have much a complaint about the video (even the other, later night-scenes in the movie).

All-in-all, this is on the higher-side of average in video quality (overall). But, at times there are some really fine-looking scenes (like the dock-fight) that make you happy that you bought the pricey import BD instead of renting the DVD.

By the way, German subtitles are defeatable; just remember to do this with the pop-up menu at first play. Highlander: The Source does not have a disc top-menu, and proceeds right into playing the movie with the Foreign audio track. Also, there are a lot of scenes at the beginning with time/location titles. For some ass-munch reason, they decided to hard-code a German translation of the titles right below them. Don't panic: these stop after a while and there IS indeed an English track.

AUDIO:
Since I've blathered on long enough, I'll be short and sweet here: this is a pretty rockin' DTS HD MA track. Some killer explosions and good level of dialogue throughout. Nicely done.

CONCLUSION:
Highlander: The Source is probably best if you go-in with low expectations. --Which shouldn't be hard, if you've suffered through every other Highlander sequel ever made. Good performances, fairly high production values, and a good HD transfer. All-in-all, I'd say this is a pretty worthwhile purchase, and it was even a 'blind-buy' for me. I had initially thought I'd be putting this up on eBay after watching it, but am satisfied enough that I'd not only like to watch it again, but am proud to keep the movie in my collection. Which, when you think of what Highlander 2-4 were ...is really the highest praise one could give for it.