After the abominations that were the Angelina Jolie “Tomb Raider” films, it’s understandable that public perception of the “Tomb Raider” video game series began to fall. What started as a series with a kick ass female treasure hunter began to devolve into a series of films and video games with bizarre fixations on skintight bodysuits and action scenes in water.
However, in 2013 video game developed Crystal Dynamics rebooted Lara Croft as a character, giving her an engaging backstory with tons of wonderful side characters and an engaging villainous presence of the supernatural. Now, director Roar Uthaug (“The Wave”) is bringing a vision of Lara inspired by the reboot to the big screen.
Alicia Vikander’s version of Lara Croft is spunky, intelligent and fearless one moment, and weak, childish and irritatingly naïve the next. While her performance is fine, there’s nothing to this film’s portrayal of the character that makes her interesting.
The same goes for the side characters, as the film saddles Lara with a ship captain played by Daniel Wu whose introduction is so lifeless that it’s understandable if audiences are surprised to learn that he’s a major supporting character.
At least this version of “Tomb Raider” is shot and acted decently. It avoids the video game movie cliché of having everything ramped up to eleven and instead finds a comfortable middle ground between Indiana Jones style escapades and big budget video game set piece moments. Cinematographer George Richmond makes good use of low light scenes and the abundance of jungle surrounding Lara’s adventures as well.
Walter Goggins is the best part of the film, as the sinister villain Mathias Vogel. His portrayal is not large and bombastic, choosing instead to play Mathias as a man who’s been forced to stay on an island so long that he’s forgotten how to interact plainly with humanity. This gives Goggins some menacing lines to deliver in such a plain and deadpan way that it’s purely chilling.
Nothing about the film stands out in terms of action sequences either. Not bad, just nothing stands out. A few moments attempt to recreate iconic scenes from the 2013 reboot, but these scenes just instill the feeling that they’d probably be cooler in the video game.
Musically, it’s disappointing. The composer, Junkie XL, known for unique scores for films like “Mad Max Fury Road” and “Deadpool” turns out such a bland score here that it’s impossible to tell it apart from the rest of the mediocre Hollywood action genre music. At least not much of it is heard though, as the movie continues the trend of shoving clichéd pop songs into big action moments.
This all leads to a film that, despite not being overtly bad, just sits on the line of mediocrity. That is, until three quarters of the way through the film when it becomes clear that no characters have any motivation. Sure, the villain is evil, and Lara wants to find out what happened to her father, but those are all merely implied. Not even the most bare bones effort goes into explaining why these characters do what they do, beyond clichéd “good guy” and “bad guy” motivations.
Alicia Vikander’s version of Lara Croft is bogged down by poor characterizations and a lack of any kind of character development and motivations, boring music, a mediocre plot and actions scenes. A compelling villain, decent acting and cinematography can’t save a film the film when it’s already so bogged down with mediocrity.
However, it’s the little care it seems to have in explaining these characters and this story that drags it further down into the realm of the annoying. Lara Croft is still a compelling heroine in pop culture. It’s just a shame that even after three films Hollywood can’t seem to figure out how to do her justice. 2/5
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Square Enix, and GK Films.