‘Extraordinary Gentlemen’ a terrific premise squandered

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In theaters

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, directed by Stephen Norrington, written by James Dale Robinson, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new adventure film “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” an oxymoron if there ever was one, is a weapon of mass destruction, a movie rigged with so much TNT, the damned thing keeps blowing itself up.

Throughout, whole cities explode, submarines explode, mountainsides explode and people explode, yet the movie, without the assistance of an explosive script, quickly counts itself among the destruction.

Loosely based on Alan Moore’s darkly imagined comic books, “LXG”- as the ghetto-fabulous folks at Twentieth Century Fox are marketing it, presumably to catch the eye of the attention-deprived hip-hop set – has a terrific premise and squanders it.

It takes a handful of the Victorian era’s more infamous heroes and villains, and asks them to stop an evil force called the Fantom from conquering the world.

In the books, that idea moved like a snake to a rat. Fueled with Moore’s ferocious wit and the clever, sudden jags he hooked through the corners of his story, there was no stopping the brutal, high-minded fun.

Director Stephen Norrington’s film, on the other hand, jacks the books’ energy with such an overbearing 21st century sensibility, it quickly dumbs down the proceedings with an overkill of action cliches.

The result? A summer blockbuster as overstuffed as a WWE locker room, but with none of the fun and all of the odor.

Set in 1899, “LXG” imagines a world on the brink of war, with Britain and Germany gearing up for a major battle after the mysterious Fantom lays waste to each with his seemingly endless supply of bombs. With both countries blaming the other, the head of British intelligence – not coincidentally named M (Richard Roxburgh) – is ordered by the queen to get to the bottom of things.

M does so by reaching out to Sean Connery’s Allan Quatermain, the roguish adventurer from H. Rider Haggard’s “King Solomon’s Mines,” who reluctantly agrees to join the fight by forming a literate league of superheroes.

The team he gathers is impressive: Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (Shane West), H.G. Wells’ the Invisible Man (Tony Curran), Jules Verne’s Capt. Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah), Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde (Jason Flemyng), and Bram Stoker’s Mina Harker (Peta Wilson).

With special effects that are just a step above what you see on the Sci Fi channel and a script by James Dale Robinson that favors flash and fire over nuance and logic, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” is actually rather illiterate, a disappointment that has its moments, particularly with the charismatic Connery, but which rarely is as extraordinary as its title suggests.

Grade: C-

On video and DVD

GODS AND GENERALS, written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, based on the novel by Jeffrey M. Shaara, 225 minutes, rated PG-13.

By the end of the year, Ron Maxwell’s insufferable new Civil War epic, “Gods and Generals,” will likely be tops among 2003’s biggest flops.

With its reams of endless speeches, forced emotion, whitewashing of history and interminable length, the film is a big, bad, bloated bust, failing on almost every level to live up to its 1993 predecessor, “Gettysburg,” a better movie that wasn’t nearly as self-conscious or as self-important as this fresh blast of hot air from producer Ted Turner’s furnace.

Based on Jeffrey M. Shaara’s novel, “Gods and Generals” is a nearly four-hour prequel to “Gettysburg” and the second in a planned trilogy. God help us all if the next film is as dull as this.

Instead of focusing on one major battle, as he did in “Gettysburg,” Maxwell focuses on three – the Manassas (Bull Run), Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville – while also telling the stories of the three most influential men behind those battles: Confederate Gens. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephen Lang) and Robert E. Lee (Robert Duvall) for the South and Maine’s own Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels) of the 20th Maine Regiment for the North.

The balancing act that ensues is difficult to watch because Maxwell botches it so completely. With his purple script in hand, he sandbags his characters with such florid sentiment, you’d swear that Hallmark got screwed out of a writing credit. And maybe they did, because nobody – nobody – talks as archly as these people.

Jackson, in particular, comes off like a crazed, Bible-thumping madman, which some might say he was. Lang certainly seems to think so, and he gets behind the idea that every moment, small or great, deserves a big, holy-rolling speech to support it, which becomes at once hilarious and nauseating.

Joshua Chamberlain does have a speech toward the end in which he instructs a fellow officer to refrain from using the term “darkie” because “that’s a patronizing expression from which we must free ourselves.” But there’s no passion in his voice, no sense of rage, and the scene ultimately falls flat and feels perfunctory.

Faring better are the battle scenes. Each is given its due with grand re-enactments comprising 7,500 real-life Civil War buffs. But for the most part, Maxwell sabotages a good deal of the combat scenes by not getting behind them. His camera is literally a stick in the mud, panning and shooting the action while only occasionally plunging into the heart of it.

With jarring cameos by Phil Gramm and Ted Turner, “Gods and Generals” is far from heaven, withering beneath the formidable shadow cast by Ken Burns’ defining documentary on the Civil War.

Grade: D-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

The Video-DVD Corner

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

About Schmidt ? A

Adaptation ? A

Analyze That ? C-

Antwone Fisher ? A-

Basic ? D

Comedian ? B+

Dark Blue ? B

Die Another Day ? C+

Drumline ? B+

8 Mile ? C

The Emperor’s Club ? C+

Femme Fatale ? C+

Frida ? B+

Gangs of New York ? C

Gods and Generals ? D-

A Guy Thing ? D

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ? B+

The Hot Chick ? C-

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days ? C-

The Hours ? A

Just Married ? C-

Narc ? A-

National Security ? C-

Old School ? D-

Phone Booth ? B

Pinocchio ? F

The Pianist ? A+

Punch Drunk Love ? B+

Real Women Have Curves ? A-

The Recruit ? B

Red Dragon ? B+

Shanghai Knights ? B

Talk to Her ? A-

Tears of the Sun ? C-

The Transporter ? B-

The 25th Hour ? A