Game on as Lara returns to the fray

Lara Croft, the underdressed heroine of the Tomb Raider video game franchise, is a survivor.

She somersaulted onto the original PlayStation, has inspired comic books and defied the laws of physics in two lacklustre Hollywood adaptations, which shoe-horned Angelina Jolie into Lara’s iconic vest and shorts.

Now it’s the turn of Swedish Oscar winner Alicia Vikander in a big budget origin story.

The script is reverse-engineered from a slam-bang finale, which lets Lara delve into her bag of tricks: clambering, sprinting and somersaulting around a boobytrap-laden temple.

A pervading mood of deadly seriousness is enlivened by Nick Frost and Jaime Winstone as bickering husband and wife pawnbrokers, whose store room of weapons suggests a bright future as armourers to Lara in the rich cinematic tradition of Q and James Bond.

Seven years pass after his disappearance, Lord Croft’s daughter Lara (Vikander) refuses to sign papers declaring him dead.

Lara travels to Hong Kong to charter a boat captained by Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), whose father vanished with Lord Croft on the journey to an uninhabited island in the Devil’s Sea.

Action sequences pilfer design elements from Jurassic Park and Wanted but are slickly executed.

Director Roar Uthaug’s picture isn’t game over for further escapades with Lara, not does it emphatically kick ass.

It’s more of a polite spanking.