‘Tomb Raider’ offers Vikander, but not much else
This is why people say Hollywood is out of ideas.
Less than 15 years after the release of the second of two “Tomb Raider” movies starring Angelina Jolie, we are being given a new take, “Tomb Raider,” starring Alicia Vikander as a 21-year-old version of franchise heroine Lara Croft.
The first two movies weren’t very well-received by critics; 2001’s “Lara Croft:
Tomb Raider” boasting a 20-percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, 2003’s “Lara Croft Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life” hanging in their with a every-so-slightly meatier 25.
franchise And hey, on the which video the game movies are based was rebooted in 2013 — to critical acclaim, by the way — so why not the movies?
Well, this “Tomb Raider” is why.
Oh, it’s not terrible, at least not mostly. It’s just completely unremarkable in almost every way, from its bland, largely nonsensical storytelling to the smallername supporting cast surrounding the rather appealing Vikander.
While Vikander’s Lara isn’t as charismatic as Jolie’s, you can’t really pin the failings of this effort on the actress, so good in 2015 films “Ex Machina” and “The Danish Girl,” for which she earned an Academy Award. She’s in killer shape in “Tomb Raider,” the movie’s production notes talking about her 45 minutes of training every morning of the shoot and a diet described as “slow carb and lean protein.” So Vikander was all in on being Lara Croft, which is cool, but it’s not nearly enough.
Her Lara grew up largely without a mother and with an adoring but often-absent father, Richard (Dominic West), a wealthy businessman who began searching for proof of the supernatural following the loss of his wife. Since her childhood, he has lovingly called his daughter “Sprout” but has jetted off to parts unknown, keeping his intentions secret from her and leaving her to fend for herself for long stretches of time.
When we meet adult Lara, her father has been missing for years and is presumed by many, if not by her, to be dead. Instead of being part of the family business, Lara works as a bike courier and has fallen behind on her payments to a gym where she spars with others training in mixed martial arts. (Her resistance to her family fortune is never well-justified by the film’s writers, but it does provide an excuse for a cool early sequence in which Lara will earn money if she can avoid other bikers during a “fox hunt” through a bustling urban landscape.)
When she is called into the Croft Holdings’ corporate offices to sign some papers that would officially recognize that Richard is no longer there to lead the company — a move nudged by the company’s longtime executive Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas) — Lara instead finds a clue to follow. That leads to a secret lair kept by her father, where she find more hints as to how her father actually was spending his time.
“Dad, what were you up to?” she wonders aloud.
Instead of signing papers, she jets off to Hong Kong, in search of a former associate of her father’s with a boat who she hopes will be willing to transport her to a mysterious island in the treacherous Devil’s Sea. However, she instead finds that man’s drunken son (Daniel Wu of AMC’s “Into the Badlands), who reluctantly agrees to help her in his father’s place.
Danger awaits at their destination in the form of Walton Goggins’ Mathias Vogel, who knew Richard and who represents some nefarious and powerful faraway interests.
Unfortunately, by the time there finally is tomb raiding, the movie has run out of its early juice and started to drag irreparably.
The biggest drag on “Tomb Raider” is its writing, with screenplay credits going to Geneva Robertson-Dworet (planned “Suicide Squad” sequel “Gotham City Sirens”) and Alastair Siddons (“Trespass Against Us”) and story credits going to Evan Daugherty (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) and Robertson-Dworet. Decisions made by Laura — especially a climactic one — often don’t make much sense. Plus, you can’t help laugh at a sequence that takes place on the docks in Hong Kong in which Lara chases three young men who have stolen her backpack but is then chased by them after she recovers the bag and one of them brandishes a knife. Um, why not just flash the knife earlier, guy?
“Tomb Raider” is helmed by Norwegian director Roar Uthaug, whose feature debut, “Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey),” was successful overseas but likely not seen by many in the United States. He oversees some fairly interesting camera work, but he can’t find a way to give the film more momentum, seemingly being weighed down by the script.
With Vikander’s Lara being less-fun than Jolie’s — hopefully a choice related to the story and not a decision made to play to Vikander’s perceived strengths — it would have helped to have some heavy hitters in the supporting cast. West (“Money Monster”) was terrific years ago as a lead on “The Wire,” but he’s no Jon Voight, who first played Richard Croft on the big screen. And the talented Goggins (“The Hateful Eight”), a terrific small screen villain on “The Shield” and “Justified,” doesn’t feel like enough here.
Ultimately, “Tomb Raider” offers some decent scenery — the film was shot largely in and around Cape Town, South Africa — but not much more.
We’ll have to see whether there is enough interest in the sequel the movie tries to set up in its final minutes.
What, did you think Hollywood has any better ideas?