OPENS OCTOBER 17, CERT 12A, 110 MINS
Comic fans are mauling this adaptation of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s Victorian-literary superhero strip. Yes, the erudition of the original has been gutted and replaced by big punch-ups. But that works fine for a popcorn romp like this. Rather than try to turn the comic into a film, Blade director Stephen Norrington has let the film become a comic:big on visuals, short on plot.
In a beautifully-rendered gas-lit London, the heroes of Victorian pulp fiction?Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Dr Jekyll (Jason Flemyng), Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, the Invisible Man and Tom Sawyer?are gathered to combat a mysterious foe who’s attempting to start a world war. True, the action leaps nonsensically from London, via Nemo’s ship the Nautilus, to Venice and finally Mongolia, but it’s no less fun than your average Bond film. In fact, this works well as a madcap, though muddled, 1860s take on the good old British spy flick.