Director
Roar Uthaug
(THE WAVE)

Stars
Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins and Daniel Wu

It’s hard to believe that it has already been 17 years since the release of LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER, with a sizzling Angelina Jolie in the starring role. Though this first adaptation of the popular video game series left unflattering impressions, it did indeed earn success at the box office. In just its opening week, LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER gave film distributor Paramount its second-best debut with $48.2 million, topped the opening record for a video game adaptation and most importantly, it beat the opening record for a film featuring a female protagonist. 

Based on the 2013 video game, this TOMB RAIDER film series reboot features the dazzling Alicia Vikander donning the tank top of Lara Croft, who is living in London where she is facing pressure to claim her father’s inheritance by his business associates after his extended disappearance. She soon discovers that her father, Richard (Dominic West), traveled to an island in search of a mythical Queen named Himiko that he’d been researching. Determined to learn the truth behind her father’s quest and fate, Lara journeys to the remote island with the assistance of Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), a ship captain who also lost his father.

How will you view 2018’s TOMB RAIDER? Is it going to be the original version up against the more modern adaptation for comparisons sake? Or perhaps you will (also) judge more according to the presence of Jolie v’s Vikander? Either way, if taken for face-value, this relatively straightforward exercise in movie-making isn’t as industrious as its lead actress evidently was in her preparation for the role, but it’s certainly entertaining-enough.

In order to appreciate Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, one should accept the difference in persona and physique to any previous renditions of the character. Having actually gained noticeable muscle for this part and performing her own stunt work, the Academy Award-winning actress undoubtedly surmounts the physical demands required while also being completely capable at demonstrating the necessary emotions. As for the development of the story and the structure it is rendered, TOMB RAIDER is a more pedestrian journey. During its more enjoyable sequences, this reboot is reminiscent of an Indiana Jones flick and THE MUMMY (Brendan Fraser’s version, not Tom Cruise’s absolute stinker!), only darker in tone and more violent than those films. At all other times, it has the appearance of any other stock-standard action film complete with too many implausible and over-the-top set-piece sequences. To call-out just a couple; it just isn’t possible to face-plant into the trunk of a tree or to fall horizontally through the thick branches of several trees at a rapid pace and emerge from such brutal scrimmages as unscathed as seen here. Facially, in particular.

Although Norwegian director Roar Uthaug’s first English-language feature film is unremarkable and sends its lead character into damage control, it does allow a couple of hours to elapse just adequately.

3 stars

Viewer Discretion
M (Action violence and sense of peril)

Trailer
TOMB RAIDER

Moviedoc thanks Roadshow Films for the invite to the screening of this film.

Review by Leigh for Moviedoc
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