[yasr_overall_rating]
Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she finds herself on the island where her father disappeared.
Adventurer and archaeologist Lara Croft was first introduced to the world in 1996 when Eidos released their adventure game, “Tomb Raider” on PC, PlayStation, and Sega Saturn consoles. These games told the story of Ms. Croft, the sole heir of the aristocratic Croft family, who used her wealth to fund expeditions that took her around the world in search of forgotten treasures and artifacts, some of them linked to supernatural powers. The games were exciting and in that world, anything was possible. In 2001, Angelina Jolie was the first actress to portray Lara Croft on the big screen in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,” followed by a sequel, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life,” in 2003. These were fun, campy movies whose best traits were Angelina Jolie herself. She embodied everything the video games presented Lara Croft to the world with, along with a very authentic British accent, but those two films still seemed to be missing something, heart, soul, call it whatever you want but while Ms. Jolie, at least physically, personified Lara Croft, the movies themselves were all style over substance.
When the trailer for this version first arrived, it looked closer to the 2013 video game which was simply titled “Tomb Raider.” In it, Lara travels to the fictional lost island of Yamatai, located in the Dragon’s Triangle off the coast of Japan. In the trailer, they included scenes straight out of the game and in finally watching the movie itself, it is based squarely on that video game’s storyline.
In the new “Tomb Raider” movie, we are introduced to a young Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) living in London. She is the sole heir to the wealthy Croft family but since her father’s disappearance many years earlier, Lara has tried to distance herself from the family name. Working as a bicycle courier, she inadvertently causes a car accident and is arrested. When her stepmother Ana (Kristin Scott Thomas) bails her out, she reminds her that time is running out and if she doesn’t come to Croft headquarters and sign the paperwork, inheriting all Croft assets, including Croft Manor, where she and her father grew up together, they will be sold off at auction to the highest bidder. Reluctantly, she does so but upon signing, her attorney gives her a Japanese puzzle box instructed by her father and when she opens it, it gives her a clue to the case her father was working on when he disappeared. She races back to Croft Manor and utilizing her exceptional skills at solving intricate entanglements, she discovers a hidden basement in the mansion, and there, she unearths an old prerecorded videotape left to her by her father. Upon playing it, he asks her to burn all the research he did on his final case titled “Himiko.”
Naturally, she does not, choosing instead to read all of his work and research papers and when it points her to the long-forgotten island of Yamatai, off the coast of Japan, she makes her way there and employs the services of Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), captain of the ship Endurance. They quickly discover that exactly seven years ago, Lara’s father hired Lu Ren’s father to take him to Yamatai, with neither one of them ever seen again. As they eventually near the island, they are embroiled in a horrendous thunderstorm that tears the boat apart and they both wind up on the island unconscious. When Lara wakes up, she finds herself in a tent, lying across from Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), a man who initially appears to want to help her but she soon realizes, he is in fact, the enemy, working for a company called Trinity, mercenaries for hire who travel the world, like Lara, looking for old forgotten artifacts with supernatural abilities but choosing to use them for evil instead of good. He also informs her that he killed her father. Because she brought her father’s book of research along with her, the very thing he asked her to burn, they are able to locate the entrance to Himiko’s tomb, the mythical Queen of Yamatai who, they say, was able to kill anyone by simply touching them.
Lara manages to escape and while traversing the island, she comes across an older man, disheveled and unkempt but soon becomes conscious of the fact that it is indeed, Richard, her father. After an emotional reunion, they realize that it is only a matter of time before Vogel opens the entrance to the tomb and so father and daughter hatch a plan to save Lu Ren and the other men forced to work for Trinity, fishermen who came too close to the island and like Lara and Lu Ren, washed ashore. While they manage to help the fishermen escape, Richard sneaks away to see the entrance of the tomb and is captured by Vogel. Lara turns up, with the intent of killing Vogel but when she realizes that she and her father are outnumbered by his men, she surrenders and is subsequently forced to open the tomb. As they proceed inside, she navigates a number of booby traps until they finally reach Himiko’s tomb. As Vogel and his men open the tomb and find the Queen’s corpse inside, as they are about to remove her body, Lara quickly deciphers the hieroglyphics on the wall and realizes that contrary to the story that the queen was evil and had killed many of her own people, and was subsequently locked away in the tomb, she did in fact, lock herself away, choosing to commit suicide so that no more of her people would die. She tries to warn Vogel of this, that her corpse is a deadly virus that could kill millions but he brushes her off and as his men try to lift the cadaver, they succumb to a deadly flesh-eating virus that dissolves them to ashes. With the world at stake, Lara and Vogel must now battle it out as the temple comes crashing down around them.
One of the issues that I felt plagued the original two movies, was that for adaptations based on a video game character that spends 99% of her time in temples and tombs, they veered off in a completely different direction, choosing to make her a flashy heroine, akin to Neo from “The Matrix,” a hint of James Bond, and, of course, Indiana Jones. Both of those films had Lara spend a brief amount of time in hidden temples, choosing instead to give her action scenes in a variety of locations around the world, from London to Cambodia to Venice and Siberia. In this new iteration, we spend the first half of the movie learning about the character of Lara, for those who are not familiar with or have played the video games, and the last half takes place on the island of Yamatai, but once again, only the last act of the film is spent in a temple, with too much unnecessary character exposition and backstory, and not enough raiding of tombs. You could call this movie, “Tomb Raider Royale,” much like the 2006 Bond movie starring Daniel Craig (who also appeared in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”), it is a reboot of sorts, showing you Lara’s beginnings and what made her the confident, globe-trotting heroine she has now become. Alicia Vikander does well in her role, and while they set up a continuation of “Tomb Raider” films in the movie’s final scenes, one can’t help but wonder why they bothered, seeing that if this does not perform well at the box office, Ms. Croft may well be left raiding home video instead.
In theaters Friday, March 16th
