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| photo courtesy of zayzay.com |
Alicia Vikander stars as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. The movie serves as a reboot to the previous Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films, both of which starred Angelina Jolie and both of which were bashed by critics. Adaptations of video game franchises have a sorry track record, critically and commercially, in Hollywood, but Tomb Raider looks to break that streak with a more streamlined, character-driven origin story.
In Tomb
Raider, Lara Croft lives in the shadow of her father’s (Dominic West) disappearance.
Rather than take advantage of the immense financial resources she would inherit
if she declared him legally dead, Lara chooses to hold out hope and forge her
own path instead. This all changes when she discovers a secret message left behind
by her father, detailing his exploits as an adventurer/archaeologist and his
confrontations with the shadowy organization known as Trinity. Empowered by
this knowledge, Lara leaves her life behind and seeks to finish what her late
father started.
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| photo courtesy of technobuffalo.com |
If you know anything about the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider franchise, you’ll
know what’s in store when you go to see this movie in theaters. Like the Uncharted video game series and (of course)
Indiana Jones, the Tomb Raider series is a member of the “archaeology
adventure” genre. As such, you expect a certain amount of action, exploration,
puzzle-solving, and maybe an element of the supernatural thrown in there for
good measure. In that respect, Tomb
Raider is pretty much par for the course; it delivers a satisfying dose of
each of those ingredients. If you’re looking for anything deeper or more
original, however, you’re probably going to leave the theater disappointed.
The movie’s best asset—by leagues and
bounds—is Vikander, who easily makes the entire movie with her performance. Tomb Raider might not establish Lara
Croft as a crucial action hero for our times, but it certainly establishes
Vikander’s potential as a leading lady. The best scenes in the movie (scenes
which, coincidentally, have the least to do with the actual plot) are those
which center around her character and the fun she gets up to on her own.
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| photo courtesy of technobuffalo.com |
When it comes to story, Tomb Raider makes a few good choices…
and then a bunch of bad ones. It takes a smart approach in theory, delivering a
more streamlined, focused narrative—there’s an incredibly simple plotline here—and
making an effort to keep the movie character-driven and personal at heart. But
those decisions can only do so much for a story that feels so devastatingly
derivative: for most of its runtime, Tomb
Raider recycles the expected plot points and adds almost nothing new.
It’s all the more unfortunate because Tomb Raider shows so much potential in
its first act. The opening scenes introduce a likeable protagonist, showcase
the movie’s only original action sequence, and set up a promising basis for the
rest of the movie. But once the movie gets around to the actual tomb raiding,
it quickly becomes clear that Tomb Raider
doesn’t actually have any new ideas; the audience is dropped into a new setting,
and, with a dramatic shift in tone and quality, the same old tried-and-true
plot takes over. After that point, Tomb
Raider has a few thrilling moments, but it doesn’t produce anything quite
as entertaining as what happens in the early scenes.
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| photo courtesy of icrewplay.com |
There are some other snafus along the
way. Channeling its lowest video game impulses, Tomb Raider tends to get its exposition out of the way in awkward
bursts, usually via chunks of poor dialogue. And while the movie does feature
plenty of puzzle solving, it doesn’t let the audience in on most of it—Lara Croft
solves the puzzles on her own, in her own mind, and the audience just watches
as she does so. It probably saves Tomb
Raider some time to do things this way, but it misses an opportunity to
engage the audience in what could be one of the movie’s most interesting
features.
FINAL VERDICT: Tomb Raider is too uninspired to be anything special, but its genre
thrills and a solid performance from Alicia Vikander might make it fun enough for
one go-around.
Watch the trailer here.
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| photo courtesy of polygon.com |
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