Plot: 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.
I’m trying to start this review with some really sharp comment, something more verbose than “This is a poor, poor film”. As I can’t come up with something quite yet, you can take that as a start to this review and take it to heart. The remake crazy continues because apparently originality has been slaughtered. What sacred franchise hasn’t been touched? So unnecessary, yet movie houses are desperate to cash in on that nostalgic feeling, yet somehow still too lazy to develop proper scripts.
Tomb Raider is no different. Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Alastair Siddons and Evan Daugherty thinks their movie watchers are remarkably stupid (judging by my fellow audience members, they weren’t all that wrong). Visual and verbal clues are everywhere. Lara is forced to verbalize all her thoughts, because the audience couldn’t pick it up for themselves apparently. Clues are left everywhere – such as “Watch me” on the obviously placed video camera her dad left in his den. I also happen to think Lara isn’t nearly as bright as we must believe. She refuses to access her father’s fortune before she sets off to the island she is supposed to stay away from, yet sells her most valued possession to access to embark upon her mission. She travels with a drunken Chinese sailor (Daniel Wu) in a broken down boat because logic. They are both immediately captured when they wash out on the coast by madman fanatic Matthias Vogel (Walton Goggins). He at least provides a legitimate face to the devious company setting out to disrupt the world. Things naturally escalate and with many improbable events that would certainly have caused death to any normal person, there is a final explosion and escalation and a setup for an additional film.
I, quite obviously, didn’t like it. It was agony and I was itching to just walk out of cinema. It even seemed like that new Pacific Rim film, which looks like a Michael Bay extravaganza (though not directed by him at all), would have been a better choice. I do admire Alicia Vikander – she’s ripped for this role and performs admirably in the various obstacles set out for her, but she’s actually just way too talented to have to suffer through such substandard writing.
Although the film had some merits, I will most certainly not think back fondly or attempt to watch a second installment, which is bound to happen as the film is doing surprisingly okay in the markets.
Rating: 5/10
Life of this city girl 