THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
Certificate: 12A
Running time: 110 mins
Starring: Sean Connery, Naseeruddin Shah, Peta Wilson, Stuart Townsend, Tony Curran, Jason Flemyng, Shane West

That comics have replaced literary classics as the source for Hollywood blockbusters says much about current tastes. The latest to make the transition from inky page to silver screen is the stylish but sterile The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, based on the comic books of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. In an ironic twist Moore and O'Neill have plundered some of literature's greatest works for the cast of their story.

Such familiar names as Tom Sawyer, Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde and Dorian Gray appear here, plucked from their literary realm and thrust together into an unfamiliar world where their distinctive characteristics and abilities have them reclassified as superheroes, or Extraordinary Gentlemen as they are more demurely dubbed. It's an imaginative concept and one realized with some flair by director Stephen Norrington and production designer Carol Spier. LXG (as it's alternatively known) is visually striking. Its dark, atmospheric world, emphasized by Dan Lausten's lush cinematography, has a distinctly painterly quality courtesy of its extensive and evident use of CG that helps blur the edges between comic book and live action.

The story, though, is a little less imaginative being the all too common tale of world domination. In this instance the evildoer is a masked man known as the Fantom who plans to sabotage a meeting of world leaders in 1899 Venice by sinking the city through a series of explosions. To prevent the catastrophe a mysterious British intelligence officer M (Richard Roxburgh) assembles a crack team of outcasts known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Led by the valiant adventurer Alan Quatermain (Sean Connery), the league comprise of the seafaring Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), who built and helms the elegant underwater vessel, the Nautilus, the ageless Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), the beautiful vampiress Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) - who qualifies as extraordinary, but is definitely no gentleman - the invisible Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), the meek Dr Jekyll (Jason Flemyng), who transforms into the monstrous Mr Hyde, and finally the quick shooting Tom Sawyer (Shane West). Collectively the League is an eclectic and forbidding bunch, but inevitably when juggling so many characters, it allows for little beyond surface sketches.

LXG's period setting is opulently reflected in the sets, costumes and vehicles, all of which blend a large degree of fantasy with accuracy, but the film's visual appeal only sustains interest so far. And while there are plenty of elaborately staged action sequences, their outcome is of little concern. The gentlemen (and woman) may well be extraordinary, but on this evidence they are also rather lifeless.

Rating: 06/10