Review: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Blu-ray: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen unfortunately has a legacy of being known more as the movie that was the catalyst for Sean Connery quitting acting and Stephen Norrington quitting directing, rather than the enjoyable (yet flawed) action adventure romp that it is.
With a cast of fictional characters that includes Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Tom Sayer, Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, and a visual style that echoes its comic book origins, LXG (as it was known during its marketing campaign) is set in an alternate steampunk Victorian era where Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) leads a team of ‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (though Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) is obviously NOT a gentleman!) against a crazed madman known as ‘The Fantom’ who plans to start a world war.
Despite opening at #2 at the box office and taking $179K worldwide, LXG took a lashing from both critics and fans of its source material, and so a proposed sequel has never been made.
With such a large cast of characters, it can only spending fleeting moments creating depth and meaning to them, which often leads to little empathy for the situations they find themselves in. And they find themselves in a lot of situations. However, each character has their own particular charm, and it’s a great post-movie discussion to which character(s) you bonded with the most.
The narrative flies along at a fair old pace, with action set-pieces thrown onscreen with abandon. All of them high on fun, yet low on fear. This is a great adventure movie for family viewing.
With tongue always placed firmly in cheek, LGX is a fun romp that has unfairly been overlooked by many movie fans for far too long. This release from Fabulous Films is the perfect time for new viewers to discover it and a deserved re-watch by everybody else.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is released on 29th October 2018 and you can buy it by clicking HERE. ALL money raised by purchasing from Amazon via our website is given back to our listeners and followers in upcoming competition prizes. The more people buy, the bigger our prizes.
Review by Dave (host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Fabulous Films.
