PREMIERE.COM REVIEW (posted 7/11/03)

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — or LXG, as the studio would have its less literate fans call it — begins with the bullet-riddled destruction of one library and ends with the burning of another. Such is the reverence this movie feels for the written word, which is a little off-putting considering that the story unites a handful of your favorite 19th-century literary characters — legendary adventure-monger Allan Quatermain, vampiress Mina Harker, in-a-league-of-his-own Captain Nemo, invisible master thief Rodney Skinner, Tom Sawyer, Dr. Henry "I don't think you're gonna like me when I'm angry" Jekyll, and Dorian Gray (yes, Dorian Gray) — and reimagines them as superheroes.

It's a "novel idea," you might say, but strangely enough, this motley adaptation of the comic-book series by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill borrows very little from the books that inspired it. Instead, Blade director Stephen Norrington poaches from cinematic, rather than literary, sources. A megalomaniacal villain, the assault on his evil lair, and the casting of Sean Connery, as Quatermain, all serve to evoke the James Bond franchise (Connery all but winks at the audience when the League's organizer introduces himself as "M"), and the production design clearly owes a heavy debt to Tim Burton's Batman.

After an almost interminable first act (40 minutes, by my clock), in which the movie must obligingly lay the foundation for sequels, Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) bravely steers his gleaming computer-generated wonder-sub, the Nautilus, into murky waters indeed. Venice, it would seem, is under attack from a mysterious evildoer named the Phantom ("very operatic," quips Quatermain), and it's up to the League to thwart his plans and prevent — gasp — world war! Or not. Despite their best intentions to the contrary, world war will indeed consume Europe some 15 years later, evidently no less inevitable than a Terminator-induced Judgment Day.

It's all quite silly, really, but diverting enough as the movie devolves into increasingly outrageous set pieces, pyrotechnics, and so-called "twists." Without spoiling the surprise, consider the mystery of the Phantom's identity, which inexplicably lies hidden behind not one mask, but two. Funny that a movie that takes such care to explain why this League recruits an invisible man other than the hero of H.G. Wells's novel (Jack Griffin died at the end of the book) has no trouble taxing plausibility by introducing automatic weapons, automobiles, and even vinyl records to a showdown that owes what little charm it musters to its turn-of-the-century setting. In the end, what's most extraordinary about Gentlemen is that despite its preposterous leaps of logic, it somehow still emerges as a reasonably entertaining summer blockbuster.

— Peter Debruge