TOMB RAIDER
Can it banish the videogame curse?
CERTIFICATE 12A DIRECTOR Roar Uthaug Starring Alicia Vikander, Walter Goggins SCREENPLAY Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Alastair Siddons DISTRIBUTOR Warner running time 118 mins OUT NOW
T ime heals, but not even 15 years can soothe the pain of Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, a sequel so bad it made Lara Croft: Tomb Raider seem fun. (It wasn’t.) Casting Oscar-winning Alicia Vikander as our heroine this time around might encourage even wary potential audiences to make a leap of faith… except that Angelina Jolie rocked as Croft, even if the movies around her deserved to be entombed.
Like 2013’s well-received videogame reboot, this is an origin story, in which Lara flat-shares in London and works as a bike courier. When her seven-years-missing father (Dominic West) is pronounced dead, she receives a key to unlock a mystery involving the tomb of the priest-queen Himiko on Yamatai Island (the setting of the 2013 game).
Questing for authenticity, director Roar Uthaug (The Wave) delivers practical effects, rough ’n’ ready action and some emotional weight to go with Vikander’s four kilos of extra muscle and vest. The good intentions extend to bad guy Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who gets a smidgen of dimensionality. But despite the integrity, few of the feel-the-sweat set-pieces stick in the memory and the story is as dusty as an ancient treasure map. And for all the credibility craved by the filmmakers, they’re not above allowing Lara to outrun sprays of bullets.
THE VERDICT
Jamie Graham Vikander packs a punch but this Tomb Raider is a long way off the Holy Grail of the first three Indy movies.