Directed by: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Dominic West, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Derek Jacobi
If a tomb is built to bury alive an evil sorceress who has the power to unleash dread upon the world, then why would those who constructed the tomb create a way to enter it later? In case they change their minds and decide to let lose the evil after all? Why would they waste time, energy, and resources constructing a pyramid-like tomb on an uninhabited island in the first place? Who drew the paintings all over the wall? Why did they bury her followers who committed a mass suicide also? How much did it cost, which I figure would be a lot even in early 11th century money? Why would a multi-billion dollar corporation, even one with plans of total world domination, want to unearth this evil to unleash upon the world and thus kill nearly everyone in it? Who would be left to dominate?
My entire review of Tomb Raider could be nothing but questions, but that would be boring. Almost as boring as the movie itself, which features a game Alicia Vikander doing her best Indiana Jones impression in a film which feels like a knockoff Raiders of the Lost Ark. I saw only parts of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), which starred Angelina Jolie as the ultra-skilled adventurer and never bothered with its sequel. Now we have a reboot which starts the Lara Croft story before she became the famous video game hero.
It isn't much of a story. Lara, whose missing father was a powerful billionaire, is content working as a bicycle courier, training for MMA battles, and taking on athletic dares such as a "fox hunt" in which she is the "fox" whom others chase around London on bikes. Her beloved father Richard (West) has been gone for lo these seven years and the trustees of her dad's corporation want Lara to sign papers which would officially declare him dead in the corporation's eyes and allow Lara to gain control. Lara hangs on to the faintest hope that her father is still alive and soon discovers he was not just a corporate billionaire, but a guy who tracked down artifacts in his spare time.
Richard's mission, Lara soon discovers, was to travel to an unknown island near Japan and stop another evil corporation from stealing the corpse (I assume that it is a corpse by now nearly 1,000 years after being buried alive) of the sorceress (or perhaps queen, who knows) and using it to control the world. Or at least severely deplete the surplus population. Lara lights out for Hong Kong, where she tracks down the son of the man Richard hired a boat from seven years earlier to light out for the island. Before she travels to Hong Kong, we see several instances of her athleticism, including her MMA sparring session, her bicycling abilities, and her chasing after thieves who steal her backpack in a Hong Kong harbor which looks more like a bazaar. Forget this archaeological stuff. Lara could enter in the decathlon and win a gold medal.
The ship, owned by Lu Ren (Wu), is soon destroyed in a storm and Lara and Lu are taken hostage on the island by Matthias Vogel (Goggins), who has been working for seven long years with help of lackeys and slaves to find the missing tomb on behalf of the evil corporation Richard was trying to stop. We soon learn Richard's fate as well as Lu's father's, and the movie handles a potentially touching moment all wrong. And when Lara crashed up on shore, how did the person who captures her know she would be there at that exact moment in the middle of the night during a hurricane?
And if the island is indeed as off the grid as Richard suggested in the prologue, then how can the villain receive cell phone service there? And how do so many people keep crashing into it?
No more questions, I promise. Vikander looks the role with her athletic build and steely determination, but she doesn't possess the sly sense of humor that Harrison Ford brought to Indiana Jones or even Jolie brought to the original Lara Croft. The entire film lacks any sort of fun or humor, two things which a movie such as this one desperately needs because the audience already knows it will be ridiculous. Tomb Raider feels like it is holding something back and never lets loose enough to be enjoyed or enjoy itself. The ending leaves the possibility open for future adventures, but like the tomb in Tomb Raider, the filmmakers should leave well enough alone.
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