It works as a piece of entertainment, if we don't think too much about it. But it is, in fact, a film full of problems.
I just saw this movie right now. I've always heard a lot of bad things about him, but now, after seeing him, I wonder what really went wrong here. The film, to be quite honest, is good enough to meet my expectations (even though they were quite low, I confess), and it seemed to me to be a quite acceptable piece of entertainment, if we don't think about it too much and forget the graphic novel by Alan Moore. It's an adventure film, which easily captivates those who like this style and which gives us good action scenes, with characters we know and which is full of that unmistakable Victorian charm that is still in fashion today. After all, what the hell happened here for this film to be such a resounding failure?
Let's start by talking a little about the script, which brings together bizarre characters from various literary works from the same period: Tom Sawyer, Alain Quartermain, Captain Nemo, Dr. Jeckill/Mr. Hyde, Mrs. Mina Harker, the Invisible Man (who for rights reasons had to change his name in this film), Dorian Gray and James Moriarty, to name a few. Literature connoisseurs have already realized that the amalgamation of different characters from different books and authors has a lot of potential, it could create a kind of “19th century Avengers”. The problem is that the potential was lost when the screenwriters ignored the stories of these characters and created “action figures” with the same name and some similarity. There is mutual distrust, attempts to bring some depth to the film, but in general, the story is shallow and bloated.
Throughout the film, we observe that there is no concern about precisely recreating the Victorian environment. In fact, the film is a kind of alternative history where we even see the use of technologies that only appeared long after 1900, such as sonar, radar and automobiles with automatic gearboxes. This “salad” increases the level of special and visual effects and also the creative breadth of the producers, but I don't know to what extent the public accepted it. In addition to these problems, we still have logic holes in the plot and dialogues that couldn't be more cheesy and poorly written.
Directed by Stephen Norrington, the film seems to have had no director at the helm: we can see the technical ineptitude, the disregard for key points of the project and the director's obsession with Victorian aesthetics, action scenes and CGI (the only really good things the film has to give us). In fact, the visual aspects are incredibly crafted, and we can see this in the elaborate decoration of the Nautilus, the recreation of Venice and even Mina's very elegant dresses. The action scenes are immersive, at the level of a blockbuster, and the cinematography and effects are very good. The editing, on the other hand, already fails in several moments, giving the film an uneven rhythm, which accelerates in the action sequences and dies soon after.
As for the cast, what can we say? Sir Sean Connery, despite the terrible working relationship with the director and deep dissatisfaction with the entire project, did a job well done and left the cinema with a bitter taste in his mouth, but his duty done (this was his last film). Peta Wilson and Stuart Townsend do a decent job, but with little soul. Naseeruddin Shah ignores the entire tragic depth of his character and is just a “gadget king” with a solution for everything. Jason Flemyng lives in a love-hate relationship with his fictional alter-ego that makes no sense at the end of the film, and Tony Curran and Shane West seem to have been highly underutilized. And what about Richard Roxburgh? It must have been one of the worst versions of a villain I've ever seen: a barrage of clichés and arrogance don't make a villain, they just make an idiot.