LXG is a bit of an is-it-isn't-it film when it comes to DC as it was the brainchild of legendary Brit comic author Alan Moore. At the time, DC had picked up a few of Moore's works including LXG although it would only stay with the company for a very short time before Moore took it elsewhere. However, as the film came out around this time I'm gonna say that yes it does just to say count as a DC film and therefore it's going in. Incidentally, the relationship between Moore and DC would prove to be something of a strained one as we'll see in reviews of "V For Vendetta" and "Watchmen" in future episodes of this blog.
The most notable thing about LXG is that it was Sean Connery's final film before he retired from acting a year or two later. However, therein lies the first issue with the film - because the directors blew so much of their budget hiring Connery, they were forced to pad out the rest of the cast with much less well-known actors. You may remember Jason Fleming who plays Dr Jekyll here as being the Jason from "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" who didn't go on to star in a number of no-brainer action films and date Kelly Brook while Stuart Townsend who plays Dorian Gray was previously in the under-rated '90s Brit comedy "Shooting Fish" with Kate Beckinsale. Of the others, Naseeruddin Shah (Captain Nemo) is apparently a very famous actor in his native India, Peta Wilson (Mina Harker) was in the starring role in the '90s series "La Femme Nikita" (which I honestly don't even remember) and Tony Curran (The Invisible Man) has popped up briefly in this blog playing the Scottish vampire Priest in "Blade 2".
LXG starts off in Africa in 1899 where Connery's character Alan Quartermain is chilling out in a bar when he's approached by a British government agent, Sanderson Reed, who informs him that a master criminal called the Fantom has been causing chaos by breaking into the Bank of England to steal structural drawings of Venice (?) and seeking to place the blame on Germany then kidnapping German scientists and trying to place the blame on Britain and the government needs him to help sort the whole problem out. Quartermain initially refuses until the Fantom's henchmen storm the bar and kill his drinking buddy Nigel. After he sees them off, he agrees to Reed's request.
Back in London, Quartermain is introduced to M who is putting together a collection of superheroes known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As well as Quartermain, the group currently includes the Invisible Man aka gentleman thief Rodney Skinner, vampiress Mina Harker (a former associate of Van Helsing) and Captain Nemo who pilots the Nautilus submarine. I should point out that here is where the film deviates from the comic books quite substantially and was the main cause of Moore's angst with it - in the comic books Harker is known as Mina Murray and is the leader of the group. But I guess with Connery the only big name star on board, they had to do a bit of a rewrite.
The group's first errand is to travel to Limehouse Docks and the house of Dorian Gray who M wants to recruit as the team's fifth member. Gray, similar to the book, is immortal due to a portrait of him that ages instead of him which is currently missing and we find out that he's a former lover of Harker's and actually taught Quartermain when the latter was a youngster. However, the team are ambushed in Dorian's library by the Fantom and his goons resulting in an actually-pretty-awesome fight sequence. They're aided and abetted by a young American soldier of fortune Tom Sawyer who Quartermain agrees to take on as the team's sixth member despite Gray's protestations.
Heading across the channel to Paris in the Nautilus, the team capture the monster Edward Hyde in Paris after Quartermain shoots him with a tranquiliser dart. Back on the sub, he transforms back into Henry Jekyll and agrees to join the League as its seventh member in exchange for receiving a pardon for his crimes.
The next half hour or so is dedicated to the team sailing across to Venice to intercept the Fantom who M has told them is planning to set off bombs there and blow the city up. Unfortunately this is where the plot starts to stall a bit as we've got six new characters in a short space of time with no background info on them. Unfortunately it just feels like the scriptwriters didn't really give this a lot of thought and so what could have been a good opportunity to flesh the characters out a bit is mostly wasted on sequences of Quartermain and Sawyer chatting to each other and not really saying anything of interest. We also discover that there is a mole on board as one of the team has nicked one of Jekyll's antidotes and also taken photos of the Nautilus' control room. As Skinner is a difficult man to find at the best of times due to his invisibility and also has a past as a thief, the suspicion falls on him.
We finally get to Venice where the Fantom has set the bombs off just as the League roll into town. Sawyer, Harker and Gray set off on a white knuckle ride through the streets to try and defuse them before the damage sinks the city (including a cool sequence where Harker turns into a cloud of bats to dispose of a group of henchmen) and Quartermain stalking down the Fantom who, it turns out, is M. Okay, erm, interesting twist to have the big villain reveal about halfway through the film... It also turns out that M is Sherlock Holmes' old adversary Moriarty under another alias which is decidedly random.
Back at the sub, it turns out that Gray, not Skinner, is the traitor as he gets back before the others, shoots Nemo's deputy Ishmael and commandeers the sub's escape pod to make his getaway. He leaves behind a phonograph message for the rest of the team when they return explaining that he and M are planning to start a world war between the superpowers and have taken artefacts which will allow them to clone the members of the League with superhuman powers (a vial each of Skinner and Harker's blood plus one of Jekyll's potions).
Gray has also rigged the Nautilus with depth charges and attempts to sink it but Jekyll saves the day by turning into Hyde, sealing off the flooded parts of the vessel and then punching a hole in the side of the sub to drain the water out (yeah, I know, wouldn't that cause it to sink anyway? Probably best to suspend our disbelief here). The team also get a radio message from Skinner who has stowed away with Gray in the escape pod and promises to lead the team to the bad guys' HQ.
This turns out to be in Mongolia and sets the scene for an ambitious but incredibly clumsily executed confrontation which tries to tie up storylines with characters who haven't really been properly developed in the first place and just ends up a bit of a mess. The team end up battling a bunch of M's goons who have the same powers as them (so there's an Invisible Man in Sanderson Reed and an evil Hyde who's eventually defeated by the good one. Harker and Gray have a swordfight which ends with the vampiress pinning Dorian to the wall with her sword and then uncovering his picture thus causing him to turn into a skeleton and crumble into dust.
Sawyer and Quartermain manage to pursue M to his hideout but the latter is fatally stabbed by Moriarty as he shoots an invisible Reed. M makes a run for it but Sawyer uses the crackshot skills he learned from Quartermain earlier in the film to shoot him dead and leaving his world domination plans to sink into an icy lake.
Quartermain is buried next to his dead son in Kenya, where the film started. The remaining five members of the League agree to continue their alliance into the 20th century to help protect the world. After they leave, a witch doctor randomly turns up and performs a ceremony at Quartermain's grave causing a lightning bolt to strike the rifle that Sawyer had left on top of there and presumably bringing him back to life for a sequel which, as it turns out, never happened.
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" just feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity really and it's a shame because the idea of a sort of steampunk proto-Avengers definitely had bags of potential and the action scenes are actually pretty good on the whole. Unfortunately, it suffers from a stop-start plot which starts off promisingly but then just starts to drag and drag and some twists which are...well, not quite logical to put it kindly. The worst thing though is the ending - it just feels like the scriptwriters gave themselves way too many leads to tie up with the consequence that it just ends up tripping over its own feet time after time, not helped by the fact that not enough attention has really been paid to developing or making us care about the principal characters.
I really think LXG is ripe for a reboot if someone could put the time aside. With a bit more faithfulness to the comic books (ie having Harker/Murray as the main character rather than Quartermain), more thought going into the script and if they can get a decent cast involved (the ones here try their hardest with the limited pickings they're given but I don't think it's any coincidence that none of them have really done anything of note since) there could be a really good film of this series waiting to be made if it's done right. Unfortunately though, I can't really recommend this version of it unless you're a die-hard fan of Mr Connery and are desperate to see his final film.
FINAL RATING: 🎩🎩🎩🎩 (4/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Road To Perdition (2002) (7/10)
7. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
8. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
9. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
10. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
11. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
12. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
13. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
14. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) (4/10)
15. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
16. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
17. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
18. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
19. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
20. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
21. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
22. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
23. Steel (1997) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Time to hold our noses as we break out the kitty litter to review Catwoman...
No comments:
Post a Comment