The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

So much average

Purely Joyful Movie!

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

In an alternate steam-punk universe in the Victorian era, a group of famous fictional characters unite on a mission to prevent a worldwide war. These characters include Captain Nemo, the vampiress Mina, the Invisible Man, American secret agent Tom Sawyer, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde, led by adventurer and explorer Allan Quatermain.The special effects range from decent to bad, the storyline is too linear and predictable despite having a twist halfway through, dreadful dialogues and too many stupid situations that defy logic even in a fantasy world logic. Lots of noise and explosions, hardly serves to entertain, and then easily forget.For those who know the particular canon stories of these mythical characters, it is sad to see the treatment given to them in this film, just plain sad (if you are a fan of some of this characters you may even get angry), and even more sad that this is Sean Connery last movie before retirement, because he deserved much better than this.

Another Golden Compass-John Carter Disaster. Movies intended to have sequels that never will. I knew something was wrong when they killed off Sherlock Holmes with a bomb in the first 5 minutes. Most people in the audience (2003) probably had no idea who Allan Quatermain (correct spelling) was, and I must have been asleep when they mentioned that "Tom Sawyer" was the blonde "Indiana Jones"-type American Agent. Mina Harker is beautiful as a sexy vampire? I'll "bite" but not an enlarged hulk-sized Mr. Hyde and a bulletproof Dorian Gray. Pretty good for the first 90 minutes, and where they should have wrapped it up. We pretty much knew who the heroes and villains were by then. Then it goes on too long: Hyde-Hulk vs. Insanely-sized Hyde-Hulk. A second round of carnage, the castle explodes, and the prisoners are set free. (Too "Lord of the Ringish".) Also, The Nautilus is far too huge to negotiate the Venice Canals! Watchable Summer Nonsense. Only rated-up for good CGI effects. My verdict: 20 minutes too long! A forgettable film!

If I was going to go by the first 15 minutes of this film, I'd say it was the foundations of a gripping and exciting period action film. Those introductory moments of this movie had me gripped, only to be botched by the biggest letdown I've ever seen. It's not often I don't watch a movie the whole way through, but this really did go from something great, to something so stupid it just falls into a league of its own! I realise this is based on a comic series of the same premise, but even in those boundaries this movie is rubbish!How does this amazing story start? In 1899, what resembles a British World War I tank breaks into the Bank of England and steals millions of Pounds of gold, the crime apparently being enacted by men dressed in German army uniforms. This is later compounded by a similar attack on a German Zeppelin factory, where British soldiers and a masked figure in a dark cloak destroy a large amount of equipment and kidnap a group of scientists. This results in the recruitment of Allan Quatermain, who is enjoying retirement in Kenya, right up until the moment heavily armed men burst in and try to kill him. Fending them off, he returns to London, whereupon he is confronted by an invisible man......and it's all downhill from there.The rest of the movie is just a chase across the world using ridiculous CGI technology and in the company of idiotically bad representations of icons of folk law and literature, including Dorian Grey, Captain Nemo (and a super-powered Submarine thing), chemist Mina Harker (who doubles as a bloodthirsty Vampire), Tom Sawyer (a US Secret Service Agent) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (who apparently doubles as a weedy nerd and the Incredible Hulk!).Now that I know that these are character depictions of a comic series, I understand why this has been done, but for those who don't (like myself going into this movie), you'd think this was conceived through some kind of fever dream. Sean Connery flies off to the ends of the Earth to pursue a masked baddie, joined by a bunch of misrepresentations about as subtle as a train accident in Piccadilly Circus!For what I saw, Sean Connery was once again the most captivating actor in the whole thing, keeping me glued to every line he said. As for the rest, the problem is they act far too 90's, not in the way people would act in the late-Victorian era. Indeed this is a bit of a personal peeve but it's quite a jarring one as you don't exactly find yourself being immersed. Although the names of Dorian Grey, Dr. Jekyll and so forth are household names from literature, you really don't know much about them at all, it's based entirely on name recognition and that's pretty much it! So many questions, not enough answers, and I found myself being left completely uninterested from the 15 minute mark onwards.Overall, give this one a miss. It's not a film to watch if you don't know the comic, in fact it's not a film to watch even if you do. In general it is a very, very poor display, a sadly humiliating note to end Sean Connery's career on.

The concept of this movie is good. A team full of extraordinary gentlemen and one lady. The movie feels good in parts but not as a whole. We can feel that it has been taken from a comic books as the dialogues are broken like in comic books. But that is the style of comic books. That feels good there. But in this movie nothing is smooth. Things happen too fast at sometimes. Characters are poorly build. We don't even feel the way about Tom Sawyer as we did in Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.' I was looking at this movie with great expectation but was only disappointed. But the movie is not overall bad as it portrays some good steampunk cinematography and art. Mina Harker's flight in the night sky is really extraordinary. Naseeruddin shah also portrayed good swordsmanship against automatic guns. But the storytelling was bad and no attachment can be seen between the League members.