The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

What's the Plot?

1899. As the world stands on the brink of the Industrial Age, the "civilised nations" find themselves facing something once thought of as impossible - a world war. However, in London, a mysterious man known only as M (Richard Roxburgh) has a plan to stop the madness before it begins. He recruits a league to find out who exactly is The Phantom, the person believed to be pitting nation against nation. The League is to be led by Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), the world's greatest adventurer. His team is to be comprised of Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah); Dracula vampiress Mina Harker (Peta Wilson); Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran) who thanks to an experiment is now completely invisible; immortal Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend) who appears to be linked to Mina somehow; American Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West) and Dr. Jekyll (Jason Flemying ) who's alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, could prove either a great asset or disastrous for The League in their quest to save the world.

The Review

Comic book / graphic novel adaptations were a thing to dread originally. That was until Spiderman, X-Men 2 and The Road To Perdition came along. The League... is sadly neither of these and despite the obvious effort involved, is not in the same league as them (sorry !). Like it's thoughtless advertising campaign, the film makes the mistake of believing the audience knows about TLOEG, therefore only helping to alienate those who have never heard of the comic, let alone read it.

With the slightest of history unfolded or explained, the movie launches straight into it's thinly-stretched out plot yet asks you to believe that these decidedly non-super "super heroes" are for real and can come together without knowing each other and try and save the day. Like the original X-Men, TLOEG suffers from too many characters and not enough screen time to give them all a fair shot at making their mark upon the audience.

Therefore, the likes of The Invisible Man, Dorian Gray and for the most part, Dr. Jekyl, all get the bum rush compared to Connery's Quartermain and the pointless plotline regarding his chance to right-the-wrongs-that-occurred with his dead son in the guise of West's Tom Sawyer. Stephen Norrington, whose directing duties delivered the well done and very popular Blade, seems to have had the emormity of this project run away from him. As the man who has proven he can handle action, Norrington gives the overall impression of a jumbled mess with each OTT sequence sitting uncomfortably with the next as you get the feeling that the storytelling suffered dramatically due to the stunt set pieces; an all too common defect with modern supposed "blockbusters." Fun but flawed, this will not spawn a franchaise like Blade. Shame really.

STEVE'S SCORE