Kawajiri is anime's most talented misogynist. To put it more charitably, he's the anime equivalent of trash-movie director Paul Verhoeven or comic author Frank Miller, as they all actively court a pulp ethos by throwing pretty violence around resolute heroes and women who end up victims in one way or another. And while The Search for Vengeance was written by longtime Highlander scribe David Abramowitz, it's a Kawajiri piece throughout. It's just not a very good one.

Much like the Highlander TV series and the aforementioned shitty cartoon, The Search for Vengeance gives us yet another immortal hero from the Scottish clan of MacLeod. A mulleted, unsmiling sort named Colin, he arrives in the half-flooded ruins of New York City in 2187, well after some uninventive disaster sank half the world's cites. Unlike his fellow undying warriors, Colin doesn't show much interest in lopping off other immortals' heads and draining their Quickening energy. He's really after the current duke of New York: Marcus, an elegant, heavily sideburned and undying overlord who rules the city with a cyborg army.

See, way back in the time of the Roman Empire, Colin was a simple Celt warrior and Marcus was the particularly nasty Roman general that crucified Colin's wife and slaughtered his people. Since then, Colin's chased mean ol' Marcus through centuries' worth of conflicts, always losing and somehow never changing his haircut.

Not pictured: Revolutionary War Colin, Feudal Japan Colin, World War II Pilot Colin, Arctic Blast Colin, and Sewer Surfin' Colin.

It's the same premise as the first Highlander, with only a grimy, post-apocalyptic stage to set The Search for Vengeance apart. As Marcus idly rocks out with a guitar and makes out with his equally immortal sidekick Kyala atop a Manhattan-based tower, Colin falls in with the clichéd masses below, who cling to a grimy underground life while some mysterious virus ravages their ranks. Though he's a bitter and completely uncharismatic loner, Colin somehow rallies the oppressed New Yorkers and wins the attention of a woman named Dahlia. She's conveniently both a prostitute and a revolutionary leader.

Highlander films have never aimed for the intellectual, but Abramowitz's script is ridiculous twaddle by even the most forgiving standards. Vengeance is a big, silly, highly predictable grudge match, and one in which Colin never does much more than kill and glower with manly rage. Marcus is a shade more intriguing, as he has an obsession with rebuilding Rome and, in the process, dressing like a Fist of the North Star villain. Yet we're never told why he cherishes the glory days of togas and centurions, or how he plans to bring them back. Besides, most of his robot soldiers look more like spider-legged samurai gunners than anything a Rome fetishist would make.

And when it comes to the supporting cast, Abramowitz desperately throws in every possible cliché. There's a street kid named Joe who's out to find a cure for his sick little sister. There's a ghostly Druid priest who hangs around Colin just to narrate his inner conflict and drop some of the film's worst lines, including a rare appearance by the long-dormant “NOT!” of Wayne's World infamy. And then there's Dahlia herself, an awkward hybrid of religious piety and streetwise grit, and an inevitable victim of Kawajiri's tendency to give women unpleasant fates and awful haircuts. At least the mainstream bent of the film keeps our dear director from sticking in a rape scene.

Hisashi Abe's the character designer, though the cast bears more resemblance to Yutaka Minowa's art from Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. Neither seems to realize that the bob-cut just doesn't work on some women.

It all makes for a thoroughly empty film. Even when we're given extended flashbacks of Colin's pre-Highlander life and his vendetta with Marcus, our hero just seems duller, his constant losses apparently due less to his skills and more to his poor choice of swords. There simply isn't all that much to him or his story, and it's not entirely Abramowitz's fault. Kawajiri changed a number of things in the script, adding in a subplot about the virus and resolving it in the dumbest way imaginable. At the film's climax, the plague's built up as a major threat to the city as Marcus releases a new and deadly strain into the air, but Colin beheads him (surprise!) and the magical Quickening bullshit energy absorbs the virus. Yes, really.

Yet it's also Kawajiri who saves the film from being a complete waste. Vengeance is a visual wonder from its first big fight, in which a hulking, dreadlocked immortal rides a huge chainsaw around like a motorcycle. Animated with Madhouse's usual flourish, the action's smooth and detailed, and the script's failings are often obscured by Kawajiri's spread of gory battles, plenty of stunning scenery, and one hokey sex scene. And despite the dark tones, Kawajiri's not about to get petty realism get in the way, not when he can show Colin bouncing bullets off his sword or fighting Marcus on the wing of a plummeting World War II bomber. Kawajiri doesn't care, and in a film as stupid as this, neither should we.

Kawajiri's original cut of Vengeance was supposedly several scenes longer than the DVD we now have, though I have a hard time imagining how they'd repair the movie. It's likely that we'll see a director's cut, possibly with Japanese voices. The current release has only an English track, and it's mostly unremarkable. Colin sounds completely bored, and the other characters are played by apparently decent actors who have nothing to work with.

A flat script, rehashed ideas, and frequently terrible dialogue make The Search for Vengeance an ordeal for newcomers and Highlander fans alike, leaving it a rental only if you're willing to tolerate an inane plot in exchange for some sharply animated violence. Highlander's been better, however slightly, and so has Kawajiri; Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Cyber City Oedo 808 are entertaining without being so clearly brainless. Vengeance's visual style may keep it a hair above other mediocre anime films, but it's too dumb to make a difference.