No matter what happens with the franchise next, however, there will always be many fans who will be most fond of the original movie. The narrative, for all its flaws, effortlessly segues between a convincing 15 th century Scotland and modern day NYC, with lovely little dramatic flourishes to 18 th Century France and WWII Germany, and what Mulcahy, Widen and his cast manage to do is heighten the emotional themes of the film to paper over some of the more ludicrous story beats – the 60-second shot of Lambert riding up to his cottage looking for his wife, backed by Freddie Mercury’s devastatingly emotional vocalisation of ‘Who Wants to Live Forever’, and suddenly seeing her, only now aged, an old woman while he has remained frozen in time says more about the ravages of immortality than any other piece of literature or film for this reviewer. Given all that optical trickery present with VFX, transitions and such like, Highlander always was a somewhat ‘rough’ film – softening up during these moments, with grain thickening as the printers did their work with the multiple passes through it that the film had to endure, this slightly rough look was always baked into Highlander’s look and thankfully this is retained here. It endures because it has a charm, a child-like innocence to its mythical tale of ‘goodies and baddies’ and a super-stylish aesthetic matched to one of the all-time great rock opera soundtracks.

A SteelBook Edition will be released in France later this year, with standard editions being released in Australia and New Zealand. I’m a big fan of Highlander so to have the opportunity to own a this film on 4k with some really cool new artwork on the Steelbook was an absolute must from myself.But where it gains the proper gumption for such whacked-out proceedings is from the pitch-perfect mix of Russell Mulcahy’s resourceful style, some terrific production design despite the limited budget and Sean Connery playing a 2,437-year-old swordsman originally from Egypt. After this film became a cult hit, it would inspire many sequels to come over the years between 1991 and 2007. We reviewed this Region free UK Ultra HD Blu-ray release on a JVC-DLA N5 Ultra HD 4K projector and a Panasonic DP-UB9000 Dolby Vision/HDR10 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player.

And this extends to the highlights themselves that are now much more identifiable across – the close-ups of Lambert’s face as he’s quizzed in the police station shows his face to be a wonderful melange of lighter areas and darker textures, whereas previous versions were more a solid slab of colour. Stalwarts such as Celia Imrie, James Cosmo and Beatie Edney (Purdie in Poldark) as the love of Connor’s life have small roles, but their presence lifts the material again.On my 10th anniversay Director's Cut "Widescreen" DVD (US Region 1) they're missing and on my Immortal Edition (US DVD again) they're also missing and the picture is even better.