I believe that your acceptance of the new Tomb Raider franchise will be determined by whether you can accept Alicia Vikander as the athletic, intelligent and very English action hero. Unfortunately for me, Alicia does not fit my image of the famous Tomb Raider. Now before you pin a #metoo badge on my lapel, I am not talking about the Angeline Jolie curves. This movie is a prequel to the original meeting and so this version of Lara Croft is supposed to be around 21 years old and yet to take on the villains of the world. Alicia Vikander is close to 30 and while looking young she does not have the swagger or mental toughness that you identify with a Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games or Shailene Woodley in Divergent. With so many talented young females around I have to question why Alicia Vikander.
Having not accepted this version of Lara Croft I then found that the rest of the production seemed very lazy. The jungle sets looked as if they had been stolen from an old King Kong movie and the special effects from a MacGyver episode. Lara survives a shipwreck, falls down a rock face, thrown down a raging river, escapes the crumbling ruins of an old aeroplane and then parachutes through the thick canopy of the rainforest and comes out the other end with a small graze on her cheek. Not only does our star escape any major blemishes but her shorts and singlet also survive without tears or holes.
The plot is set to explain how Lara Croft became the tomb raider that she is famous for. We see her close relationship with her father even though he is always away and sends her off to boarding school for most of her life. We are asked to believe that she has all the skills of a tomb raider by watching her get beaten in a martial arts bout with another woman, shoot an arrow at an apple that is stationary and ride a bike really fast before crashing into a car. After thinking her father is dead she finds his secret work room and discovers that he is a modern-day Indiana Jones. So ignoring her father’s instructions to destroy all his work she decides to try and find him although he has been missing for over six years.
Her early adventures lead her to an uninhabited island off the coast of Japan where a famous queen that has ‘the touch of death’ is buried but being sought by an unknown evil villain. Without giving away the plot she takes on the bad guys and this leads to more lazy story writing. She arrives on an island that is populated by multiple males that have been stranded there for years but not one of them even gives her a second look and accept her as one of the guys. The second half of the movie has been stolen from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the main character, their father and the bad guys work together to overcome all the barriers to find the treasure. This leads to more questions like if the Death Queen took herself to an isolated island who do all the bones belong to in the chasm of souls????
Anyway, the last couple of minutes set the tone for a sequel which I can promise myself I won’t be watching. As always this review is only my opinion and to those who find Alicia Vikander the perfect Lara Croft this will lead to a number of enjoyable sequels.
Rating 3 friends out of 10