Highlander – Search for Vengeance Review – 72/100

Highlander is a movie that came out recently. It’s another one of these English-spoken anime, where the original voices are all in English instead of the usual Japanese. I’d like to describe this one as “Afro Samurai with personality”. Basically, what this anime does is about the same as Afro Samurai, only a lot better. The main storyline focuses on two powerhouses, one of them is out for revenge on the other because the other killed someone important. There is the side-kick who provides your occasional commentary, and of course the female love interest. All it misses is the childhood friend, but I’m actually glad he was left out. Anyway, on top of this, Highlander manages to add enough other elements to prevent this movie from becoming as dull as Afro Samurai. For starters, Colin, the main character actually has a bit of development up to the point where he actually becomes pitiful. I won’t spoil it, but I admit I laughed at how stupid, yet tragic his character is. The side-kick also has a sense of humour, which I quite appreciated. There is also a side-story focusing on oppression, which turned out really interesting near its climax. Overall, I wouldn’t call this a failure of a movie. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any flaws, though. Let’s start with the voice-acting. The cast comes with both Scottish and American ones. With the Scottish voices, there is no problem at all. Scotland and other Celtic settings are hardly touched upon by anime, which is a darn shame, since it has enough interesting background material to make for some interesting stories, and the parts of the movie that played in ancient Scotland were nice to watch, and especially the voice-acting was a delight. I wish I could say the same about the part of the story in New York, though. The American accents just don’t fit in anime, and some particular cases of side-characters speak like a drunk Tarzan. Especially near the beginning, the dialogues just don’t flow right at all, luckily this gets better as the movie progresses. There’s also this matter of this being an action-movie. Thank goodness it isn’t just one big excuse to display some action, but the fact remains that you can’t really get a good ending out of it, and indeed, the final scene is just one big Deus ex Machina whose only purpose is to close off the story at its climax. The major antagonist also is in dire need of some character-development. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend you to go out of your way and check this movie out as soon as possible, as it’s not really that good. If you’re bored, though, and need an hour to burn, this may be a good choice. It’s nothing special, but at least it’s entertaining.]]>