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Reviews
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
not so extraordinary....
Well first off, these guys aren't very extraordinary. I've never read the book but I would imagine the characters have considerably more depth - in this movie they're pretty stereotypical. We have the great white hunter, the hot vampire chick, the narcissistic traitor, the cockney thief everybody naturally suspects of everything but actually turns out to be noble and selfless in the end, the mysterious turban-wearing bearded guy (I don't know if he's supposed to be from India or where - and I don't think whoever wrote this screenplay had a clue either) who is also not surprisingly really good at martial arts and swordplay, the enthusiastic but inexperienced young American (grown up Tom Sawyer?! what the hell???), and a fairly standard rendition of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Even the best filmmakers would have a hard time getting real depth out of seven main characters with such complicated back stories in the context of an action film, but this thing is just a mess. It tries to squeeze in bits of exposition in scattershot moments of tired flat dialog sandwiched between flashy action scenes and just ends up killing whatever pacing it could have had, while at the same time exposing each character's lack of depth.
And the action side of things doesn't exactly make up for it. To me the effects look really fake. Not fake in a b-movie kind of way, but fake in a trying-too-hard, physics-defying way. It looks really slick and nice, and is actually quite visually appealing, but the bottom line is, it doesn't look even remotely real. And the way it's cut together in the scenes with the whole gang makes your head spin - you stop caring what you're seeing anymore, it jumps around so much. Again it seems like with so many characters, the director just couldn't decide who to point the camera at, so he points it at everybody in turn for about a millisecond at a time. It gets better once the team gets split up, returning to conventional action-movie territory in the fights with only a couple of protagonists to focus on. And the one thing that doesn't look so fake is surprisingly enough Mr. Hyde - better than the Hulk, I thought, but maybe that's because the skin tone is more normal, the face not so distorted. Actually I think Jason Flemyng, who plays Jekyll/Hyde, is one of the better actors here - aside from Sean Connery, who I guess you can't really say anything bad about, although he's not exactly what I would call, um, versatile.
Then there's the plot. On the surface it might seem somewhat original, but it turns out it's not. Other people have already gone into the details so I'm not going to retread those waters, but I will point out a couple of trivial things that nagged me through the whole movie. When they're trying to catch Hyde and Quartermain is scolding Tom Sawyer for being a lousy shot, are we supposed to have forgotten about the part when Sawyer takes out each of the machine-gun baddies with a single shot in the midst of a hellish firefight? I guess we are, because from that moment on he seems to be a lot worse at hitting what he's shooting at. The other thing that bugged me was when Mina all of a sudden flies up out of the car - of course she doesn't exhibit that ability during any of the previous fights when it might have been useful, it's plainly just an invention for convenience, and to give her some screen-time. And she delivers such a flaccid one-liner to boot: "save your bullets, these are mine" or some such drivel. Ugh. Was that necessary? Horrible, horrible stuff.
Anyway I suppose there are worse, more boring things you could watch, such as a pledge drive on PBS, but there are many other crappy movies I'd recommend before this one. Even if you like dumb action movies, it might be more than you can stomach. The effects are kind of neat-looking, but no more interesting than watching somebody play video games for a couple of hours. I wouldn't pay to rent it and I laugh at the thought of anyone actually wanting to own it, but if it comes on TV and there's nothing better on, knock yourself out!
The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)
it could be worse
It's definitely a b-movie, but one with an original and intriguing idea. Original enough, apparently, to be borrowed by a handful of more well-known sci-fi movies - most notably Event Horizon, which is practically the same movie with a bigger budget (and minus the Bermuda Triangle). It's dark, disturbing and puts an unusual a twist on what initially seems like a standard sci-fi storyline - ship stranded on the dark side of the moon, no power, running out of air, people being mysteriously disemboweled. It's filmed in such a way that the images stick with you long after it's over, especially the ending. Of course you have to suspend your disbelief and ignore the ridiculous hairstyles, but if you like low-budget sci-fi/horror films, it's a lost classic.