The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
BY JOE WILLIAMS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
07/10/2003
Shane West is Secret Service Agent Tom Sawyer and Sean Connery is Allan Quartermain in
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
An entertaining subset of comic books is devoted to superhero collectives. Marvel's Avengers
and DC's Justice League of America gather the brightest stars in their respective 'toon universes
to battle evildoers. But instead of teaching teamwork, these comics celebrate singularity.
Each of the characters is essentially a soloist.
The series called "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" takes an even more audacious approach,
teaming some legendary figures of Anglo-American adventure lit who embody the world's uneasy
transition into the 20th century. The movie version sands off the rough edges and borrows
some flashy tools from recent hit movies, but like the Victorian submarine that ferries the
League into action, it is a contraption with old-school flourishes that complement its speed
and brute force.
The year is 1899. A fiend called the Phantom has hoodwinked England and Germany into a military
confrontation. The British Empire calls on the man who can avert a world war: globetrotting big-game
hunter Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery). In London, a British intelligence agent called M
(Richard Roxburgh) introduces Quatermain to the other "extraordinary gentlemen" who've been
recruited to stop the Phantom from booby-trapping a conference of world leaders in Vienna: the
seafaring Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), the narcissistic immortal Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend),
the invisible pickpocket Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran) and the obligatory distraction, vampiric
chemist Mina Harker (Peta Wilson).
Before they can board Nemo's colossal conveyance and race to Italy, they are joined by a
callow-but-cute American named Tom Sawyer (Shane West) and an ill-tempered, um, hulk named
Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), who isn't such a bad guy when he reverts to the scholarly Dr. Jekyll.
They arrive in Venice during Carnivale, and Sawyer borrows Nemo's newfangled "auto-mobile" to bollix the
bomb plot. The nighttime chase scene is bathed in the blue-gray light of a "Batman" movie,
inadvertently underscoring the story's murkiness. For too much of the film, we're not quite
sure who's doing what to whom, but when it seems that a traitor in the League has allowed the
Phantom to escape, a phono-recorded confession from the villain provides some much-needed
clarification - and a clever wink to the traditions of treachery, from silent cinema to Dr. Evil.
However, to keep the plot moving toward the final showdown in Siberia, "The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen" doesn't overdo the allusions to its source legends or play too many games with historical
anachronisms. When Mina indulges her taste for blood, it's a delicious shock, and whenever Dr. Jekyll
becomes Mr. Hyde, it's driven by psychology as much as special effects. That said, the transformation
is arguably more impressive than the digital makeover in "The Hulk," and overall the effects are
appropriately summer-scaled.
The central effect, of course, is the enduring charm of Connery, who wrings the last drops of wry
bemusement from the persona he's been peddling since his James Bond days. Passing references to
failing eyesight and the ascension of Sawyer's generation acknowledge the mortality of both the
character and the actor. But, as the final scene suggests, there's still plenty of life left in
the legend.
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"
*** (out of four)
Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of fantasy violence, language and innuendo)
Running time: 1:55
Critic Joe Williams:
E-mail: joewilliams@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8344