The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Originally Written: July 2003
There’s a really good movie in this story, based on Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s celebrated graphic novel about literary heroes- Alan Quartermain, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll, Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker, and Dorian Gray- brought together to save the world. This isn’t it. You can see the potential in the dark atmosphere and production design, you can hear it in the fine score by Trevor Jones (not up to snuff with Jones’ masterful “Dark City” or “From Hell,” but nonetheless evocative), and you can feel it in performances by Sean Connery as Quartermain, Shane (“A Walk to Remember”) West as Sawyer, Peta (“La Femme Nikita”) Wilson as Harker, and Jason Flemyng as Dr. Jekyll. Sadly, the ineptitude director Stephen Norrington (the overlong, over-stylized, under-written “Blade”) brings to this project in terms of a “flair”- if you will- for action-adventure filmmaking makes you long for someone else in the director’s chair. Either that, or it’ll a) make you wish they hadn’t tried at all, and/or b) make you long for “Indiana Jones 4”- or the forthcoming box set of the first three- that much more.
