Rated PG-13 for action violence and some sensuality.
100 Minutes

Directed By: Simon West
Written By: Sara B. Cooper and Mike Werb
Staring: Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Iain Glen, Daniel Craig, Noah Taylor, and Julian Rhind-Tutt

Right, so… Pretty much touch anything, and you get your head chopped off.  -Lara Croft

Synopsis

Video game adventurer Lara Croft comes to life in a movie where she races against time and villains to recover powerful ancient artifacts.

Review

Tomb Raider had an overwhelming amount of hype before it was released.  The ideal of Angelina Jolie playing the heroine Lara Croft had every gamer kid and action movie junkie drooling with anticipation.  Tomb Raider seemed destined for action-adventure history.  In some cases it was a success story, and it some cases, not so much.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a solid and extremely fun film with tons of exciting action, plenty of Angelina eye candy, and great fight scenes, but it lacked a pacing that had any suspense building quality to it.  The story seemed to jump from action, to Crofts back round upbringing, to the mystery at hand, to personal acquaintances that didn’t seem to mesh into the plot.  There was no continuity when trying to align these events.

Perhaps Tomb Raider didn’t need any complexity.   Maybe if the writers hadn’t tried so hard to add these layers of personality to Lara, or provide her back round upbringing into the mix of the story.  Jolie has enough charisma to carry Croft with or without an in depth character explanation.  This is exactly the kind of action flick that never really needed a huge explanation or bout of self discovery with our main character.  I think the majority of the audience would have been satisfied with Angelina kicking butt or looking hot, as long as the plot made some sort of sense.

Angelina was Lara Croft.  Without question, the most enjoyable aspect of the movie was watching her in this revered character just do her thing.  Her ability as an action hero actually caught me off guard.  She seemed so comfortable in the role that it was clear she had spent a lot of time preparing for the role, and it paid off.  As she should have been, she was the highlight of the film.

Tomb Raider just ended up being over ambitious.  It delivered solid and exciting action, a great lead for the title role, which made for a film that rose above it’s weaknesses.  I really did enjoy it, and have no problem watching it if I see it onTV, but it was without question not even close to some of the like movies in it’s genre.  The Verdict: Plain and simple fun.

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