The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Name: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Fantasy
Released: July 11, 2003
Duration: 110 min
Rating: 30
Cast: Jason Flemyng, Peta Wilson, Sean Connery, Shane West, Stuart Townsend

2003

METASCORE

Generally unfavorable reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 144 Ratings

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5.7

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5.7	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 144 Ratings

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The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen

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Movie Details & Credits

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation | Release Date: July 11, 2003 | PG-13

Starring: Jason Flemyng, Peta Wilson, Sean Connery, Shane West, Stuart Townsend, Tony Curran

Summary: Incredible technology wielded by a mind of infinite evil is threatening the safety of the entire world. To fight the unthinkable, the British government will have to mobilize the extraordinary. This team -- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen -- is the only thing standing between the future and total destruction. (20th Century Fox)

Director: Stephen Norrington

Genre(s): Action, Sci-Fi, Fantasy

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 110 min

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Critic Reviews

Collin Levey

Succeeds the same way the original comic books did: by making the conflicts and dilemmas basic enough for a five-year-old, while giving the heroes and villains glamorous outfits and layers of complexity, to thicken the broth.

Kevin Carr

The filmmakers tried to give everyone a main storyline and ended up diluting everything. With so many characters, the film lost some focus. Read full review

Kim Morgan

The film wears out its welcome by the halfway mark, becoming a silly spectacle. Read full review

Premiere Peter Debruge

Despite its preposterous leaps of logic, it somehow still emerges a reasonably entertaining summer blockbuster. Read full review

Jack Mathews

Having these characters interact is both the joke and raison d'etre of "League." Its story is beyond banal. Read full review

Peter Travers

Except for Connery, who is every inch the lion in winter, nothing here feels authentic. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

It's not brazenly bad or heroically bad or stridently bad. It's bad in all the old, dull ways of being bad: poor performances, absurd story, dreary special effects, witless dialogue and the excessive length of someone taking himself far too seriously. Read full review

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User Reviews

Wirdhe

Dec 20, 2003

This movie sucks.

1 of 5 users found this helpful

John

Mar 7, 2009

One of the most awesome movies you could ever see. Everytime it's on, I like to watch it. Why the hell would these critics be so harsh?

0 of 1 users found this helpful

TheQuietGamer

Jul 18, 2011

If your looking for a unique action movie than this is for you, the plot is admittedly extremely simple, but this movie packs a punch in the action department with cool characters with unique powers, and some awesome special effects, all in all if you can put up with the simple plot and someIf your looking for a unique action movie than this is for you, the plot is admittedly extremely simple, but this movie packs a punch in the action department with cool characters with unique powers, and some awesome special effects, all in all if you can put up with the simple plot and some bad acting from time to time this is a great action movie that will have you drooling over some of the super cool over the top moments.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Tyranian

Feb 14, 2020

Vaguely entertaining action-fantasy elevated by the presence of Connery but otherwise fairly lame.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

MovieMasterEddy

Apr 10, 2016

The listless movie adaptation of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic. The film is inspired by Alan Moore's comics of the same name, an imaginative and grisly take on Victorian heroes.

Convened to battle aThe listless movie adaptation of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has the sweat stains of wasted energy; it's dreary, yet frantic. The film is inspired by Alan Moore's comics of the same name, an imaginative and grisly take on Victorian heroes.

Convened to battle a world-threatening evil, the league is a group of tough, forgotten or ignored British loners brought together at the behest of the queen to stop this encroaching danger. In the director Stephen Norrington's film, it's a plot engineered by a villain known as the Fantom to sink Venice, and, yes, eventually conquer the world.

To foil this plot, the British Secret Service agent Sanderson Reed (Tom Goodman-Hill), working under the auspices of the agency head M (Richard Roxburgh), is determined to bring the league of misfit adventurers together. The first summoned is Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), the legendary hunter and explorer who, though well past his prime, is still capable of some world-beating moves himself.

Quatermain serves as president of these immortals, a number that eventually includes the pirate Captain Nemo (Neseeruddin Shah) and an invisible man, Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran, using his voice wickedly well). As the plot thickens, others link up, like Mina Harker (Peta Wilson), a victim of Dracula who now uses blood-sucking prowess for good. She helps, um, seduce to the cause the dandyish Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), whose portrait makes him invulnerable in addition to being impervious to aging — a witty turn that Oscar Wilde apparently had no interest in. The noble, rambunctious and innocent Tom Sawyer (Shane West), now an adult operative for the United States Secret Service, tosses his Stetson in.

Eventually the league tracks down its final inductee, Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), who stalks the streets of Paris after fleeing London. Wearing him down until he becomes the docile Dr. Jekyll, the league members browbeat him into joining. Aboard Captain Nemo's magnificent blade of a submarine, the Nautilus, the team sets out on its mission to find the Fantom and end his perfidy. Between bouts of bickering and possible treachery, the league must try to combat the Fantom's futuristic inventions — like tanks and flame-throwers — with valor, daring and some of Nemo's own engineering marvels.

The film's screenplay by James Dale Robinson — who toiled in comic books for some time himself — takes pains to get the spirit of Mr. Moore's tale right. It's a formidable task, bringing the comics' dank, coruscating vision to the screen — an abiding interest of the producer Don Murphy. Mr. Murphy was also responsible for a previous Moore adaptation, "From Hell" featuring another Victorian misfit, Jack the Ripper. Mr. Moore's melancholic and apocalyptic stories have a dour, murderous humor drizzling through the depressive clouds. No one in comics is his equal at conjuring the end of the world, and in his stories — from "The Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" through "League" — the world is awash in brutality and ugliness, deserving of doom. Mr. Moore's pleasure comes in serving up Old Testament balance.

The league of his comics falls into two piles. One group consists of victims, like the haunted, doddering Quatermain, who battles an opium habit and fears that he's too old to do much good, and Mina, whose past with vampires is only alluded to (and who leads the group with her cool British common sense and an implied death wish stemming from her reputation as a fallen woman). Or else, they're sly, amoral psychopaths, like the invisible man, who's introduced raping young women at a girls' school, and Hyde, a calculating man-beast who remembers every slight done to him or his alter ego. The vengeance he finally takes on the invisible man is horrific, a fate that will never make it from the page to the screen. No one is going to follow that story to the letter in making a big-budget action movie.

But Mr. Moore's "League" is a meditation on ambiguity, something large-scale-action spectacles have shied away from since "The Empire Strikes Back" which came so long ago it now actually feels like a legend from Victorian England.

Despite the intentions to be reverent, Mr. Norrington, who did a ruthlessly elegant job directing "Blade" is bound and gagged by the need of "League" to be quick and glib. Somehow, you sense that Fox would be happier calling this picture "The Justice League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." As it stands, the movie is neither gentle nor extraordinary. "El-Sada El-Rigal" may be a better movie than other Connery fantasy-action films like "The Avengers" but then again a glass of muddy water looks good to someone just coming in from the desert.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

RayzorMoose

Nov 12, 2013

The League is far less than ordinary.
A very spontaneous and unexplained film with no apparent reasoning by any of its characters or their actions. Decent acting, fair action scenes, but loses itself in its own confusion.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

LomaxH.

Jul 28, 2006

"It's a Winchester. Modified, American Style." "'Bomb' voyage!" "The sound of treachery!" "To that end, I set my wolf among you sheep." -- "Growl." Thanks again, Hollywood.

0 of 0 users found this helpful

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44	#44 Most Discussed Movie of 2003
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