n 1899, the great nations of Europe share an uneasy peace. For centuries, wars have been fought with single-shot rifles, cavalrymen, and horse-drawn cannons. But a new age is coming – one with tanks, as a monstrous juggernaut of an armored vehicle is used to plow into the Bank of England to loot valuable documents, as well as automatic weaponry that can fire bullets rapidly. Though Germany is initially blamed, Berlin is attacked as well, setting the stage for confusion and distrust; fresh military conflict feels inevitable. “The empire is always in some kind of peril.”

As such, Sanderson Reed (Tom Goodman-Hill), a representative from England, seeks out the legendary Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) – or Quartermain, as incorrectly written on his son’s gravestone – in Kenya to head up a team of intelligent, skillful people to thwart what appears to be the onset of another world war. Although reluctant, an assassination attempt in Africa is all it takes to convince the marksman/hunter/treasure-seeker to follow Reed to London, where a shadowy man known only as M (Richard Roxburgh) helps assemble a group, including pirate Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah); Rodney Skinner (Tony Curran), a thief and an invisible man, who can be seen only when he puts white makeup on his face and dons a trench coat; the vampiric, shapeshifting chemist Mina Harker (Peta Wilson); an immortal Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend); U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Tom Sawyer (Shane West); and half-mad, Hulk-like scientist Dr. Henry Jekyll (Jason Flemyng), who struggles at controlling the beast within him. This league of extraordinary (or supernatural) people is tasked with heading to Venice to stop an arms race helmed by a mysterious, scarred mastermind dubbed The Fantom.

Strangely, just like with the Avengers and other superhero collections, this squad contains normal humans alongside magical or mythological ones, which means that many of the fights are rather silly. Villains must go out of their way not to simply kill the weaker members. And with the introduction of the invisible man, who is so outrageously over-the-top in terms of sci-fi concepts, there really aren’t any limits to what else can be brought into the picture. Even the Nautilus, Nemo’s ship, is wildly unbelievable in size, appearance, maneuverability, and capabilities. It definitely doesn’t help that unconvincing computer graphics for machinery and ships and destruction are mixed in with the decent makeup/prosthetics for the monsters.

Although the premise, based on a graphic novel, is somewhat amusing, particularly since the league’s constituents are recognizable British fiction personas, the plot they’re involved with is rather generic. It’s just another of many save-the-world notions put upon an elite company of inexplicably powerful superheroes to clash with equally nonsensical super-villains. There may be some twists and betrayals and secret identities, but they add little to the proceedings. It’s never more straightforward and unoriginal than at the finale, when the protagonists must storm a madman’s palatial lair – fighting armies of random soldiers, rescuing hostages, and organizing various showdowns, which include far too many verbal confrontations that merely stall the much-needed dispatching of evildoers, dragging them out until they’re absurdly repetitive and remarkably uninteresting. “Well that’s ridiculous!”

– Mike Massie