Tomb Raider

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristen Scott Thomas, Derek Jacobi, Nick Frost (uncredited)
Directed by: Roar Uthaug
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure
2018

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) searches for her missing father, which leads her to a mysterious island.

Review:

Tim: I was feeling somewhat excited about Tomb Raider. After getting a lackluster original film and a terrible original in the previous decade (the last film came out a surprising 15 years ago), it felt like it was time to revisit this franchise. The long gap between films would have given people time to assess what went wrong with the first two movies and fix them for this reboot. Unfortunately, this is Hollywood, and this movie suffers many of the same issues as the previous ones. In the end, it's about on par with the original movie, which is a stunning disappointment. It felt like the more grounded approach would have helped, but this is still a very weak movie.

What struck me most about this movie is how boring it was. You have an action adventure movie starring a strong female protagonist based on a best selling video game, and you deliver such a generic, dull film. I started to forget this movie while I was watching it. The characters weren't especially compelling and it felt like the whole story was unbelievably uninspired. There's nothing here we haven't seen dozens of times before. The stakes felt low and it was as if the whole movie was just going through the motions. Lara Croft spends so much of this movie dangling- I started to laugh at how much upper body strength was required here. The visual effects were mostly average, but there were a few times when they appeared quite bad. It took me out of the movie.

I'm trying to think if there was a big action set piece that actually felt entertaining. There's a shipwreck, but besides maybe a quick cool visual, it felt shockingly devoid of excitement or energy. The motorcycle chase at the beginning might have been cool, but it was about as low stakes and pointless as you could get. There's some scenes inside the cave thing at the end, but I honestly couldn't point to a single moment that felt genuinely cool. The river scenes were slightly better, I suppose, but how those concluded in that old crashed airplane felt silly and irrelevant. There was just no sense of intensity to anything in the film. I never felt any tension or concern for those on screen. The movie is beyond predictable- we're just watching characters move around towards their inevitable conclusions. At one point, I turned to my wife and said, "I'll bet you $800 this happens before the end of the movie." And (I won't say what to avoid a spoiler), but it obviously happened. The whole movie felt so average.

I suppose Alicia Vikander was decent as Lara Croft. I'd definitely say she gave a better performance than Angelina Jolie. She felt less like a video game character and at least slightly more of a real person. I wouldn't say Vikander blew me away, but she worked. Dominic West gave a decent supporting turn. He's likeable and contributed to the film. Walton Goggins always makes an entertaining bad buy, but he felt unnecessarily on-the-nose. His character really needed a bit more complexity. You kind of groan when he ignores warning after warning as he inevitably heads towards disaster. His character desperately needed better writing. Daniel Wu was solid and I enjoyed his performance, so of course he basically disappears in the third act.

I'm not really sure what to do with Tomb Raider. Maybe this was a step in the right direction, as it was a vast improvement over the godawful second film. Unfortunately, this franchise has now delivered three films in 17 years and it feels like we haven't made any real progress in that time. I was hoping this would relaunch the franchise, but instead, I'm kind of hoping it goes dormant for another decade plus.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider