Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Review
by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)July 19th, 2001
Lara Croft Tomb Raider (2001)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"You might try to kill me."
"I'm not gonna kill you!"
"I said you'd try."
Starring Angelina Jolie, Noah Taylor, Iain Glen, Daniel Craig, Chris Barrie, John Voight. Directed by Simon West. Rated PG-13.
The official title of this long-awaited video game adaptation is Lara Croft Tomb Raider. Just like that. No punctuation, not even a comma or a colon. It's a bad omen; fortunately, it's just about the only sloppiness you'll see in this sleek, almost embarassingly entertaining summer blockbuster. The critics ripped the movie apart, but it's a great time-waster, perfect for taking in casually on a Saturday afternoon and forgetting an hour later. And I'm a sucker for completely gratuitous shower scenes, especially if the showeree is the likes of Angelina Jolie. Sue me.
The plot is nonsense about a fight for 2 pieces of some mysterious talisman that, at the appropriate planetary alignment that only occurs every 5000 years or so, will give its possessor the power to change the fabric of space and time. Or something like that. Lara Croft, a famous Tomb Raider (the movie never defines exactly what a "Tomb Raider" is), is saddled with the task of stopping the Illuminati, a secret organization of shady old men, from obtaining the parts of the triangle. Her opponent: the suave, evil, Manfred Powell (Iain Glenn), who is committed to giving the Illuminati what they want. Working with Powell is Alex West (Daniel Craig), also a Tomb Raider and, apparently, Lara's former love interest.
This is silly, of course, but you can follow it -- which is much more than can be said for the inexplicably better-reviewed Swordfish -- and all that's left to do after that is watch Jolie fire multiple guns at a time at weird robot-like creatures. The subject matter here is mythical mumbo-jumbo, but director Simon West (Con Air) makes an interesting decision: instead of approaching it with the childlike awe of The Mummy, he treats it with a sort of ultra-hip indifference. Jolie has a constant smirk on her face and so, it seems, does the director; the movie doesn't make fun of the plot or acknowledge its prepostrousness, but it sort of dismisses its own story as just another day in the life of Lara Croft.
The action sequences are fluid and exciting, and the special effects don't call attention to themselves. I'm not a big fan of the climax, which is a bit too goofy even for my tastes, but everything that precedes it is good fun. To risk overreaching, Jolie may be the best action heroine I've ever seen; she's confident and comfortable with the material, either overcoming or just plain ignoring the bombshell status placed on her. She doesn't have much dialogue and she doesn't need any; the movie avoids making an embarassment of itself by keeping it to a minimum.
There's a subplot involving Lara Croft's father (played by Jolie's real father, Jon Voight) that works to provide motivation for a crucial decision Croft makes in the climax. None of it is meant to be taken seriously, of course, and there's no pathos to speak of, but it's good to see the history of the character mentioned (Mummy's Rick O'Connell seems to have popped out of nowhere).
In a summer when a surprising amount of big-budget movies are just plain clunky, Tomb Raider is well-made, confident and entertaining through-and-through. People have harangued it for being pointless, but what's the point of such an argument against a movie like this?
Grade: B-
Up Next: Atlantis: The Lost Empire
©2001 Eugene Novikov
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