TOMB RAIDER (2018)

TOMB RAIDER (2018)

Tagline: Her legend begins.

(Action, Adventure, Saving The World) [PG-13]

I don't know if you've noticed or not, but you can't be too careful these days, because the world has gone bloody mad.

In this one young Lara Croft has become a danger seeker so to speak getting into trouble from time to time when it becomes apparent that her father has left her his empire after disappearing seven years earlier. Lara is tenacious and actually passes up the opportunity in front of her to go look for her father after finding a clue in one of his infamous puzzle boxes. She ends up enlisting the help of Lu Ren a friend of her father's as he navigates them to one of the thought-to-be mythical islands off the coast of Japan. When she gets there she realizes she is in for more than she bargained for as an old acquaintance of her fathers has an army of henchmen looking for a tomb that is meant to never be opened. 

First off, I want to say that I have never played an of the Tomb Raider video games. If you want an expert on how much this movie is tied into the game, you are going to have to go to the depths of the internet and seek out @MelonieMac. I am just reviewing this movie straight up "how I saw it" without having the burden of hoping it was like the game or hoping it wasn’t. What I can say is that according to the tomato kids over at Rotten Tomatoes, this was the best of the 3 Tomb Raider movies. I haven’t sat through either of the first two. 

What I can tell you is that Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft has an almost Sharni Vinson sort of quality about her where the toughness is ratcheted up quite a bit more than in her other films. I think the first one I ever saw her in was EX MACHINA and she seems to kill every role she does. At least in the movies I am willing to watch, some look like boring stuff I wouldn’t want to see, but I digress. The rest of the cast is solid. I think the second-best performance came from Dominic West (300) as Richard Croft. I thought he did a solid job of convincing us that what happened to him and his circumstances actually happened to him. Daniel Wu (WARCRAFT) was good in the sequences we see him in as Lu Ren. Then to round out the main cast we get Walton Goggins (MACHETE KILLS) as Mathias Vogel. I have never been a fan of Goggins's acting and this thing didn’t help that at all. 

The pacing is pretty solid but to be honest I kind of wish we had gotten more globetrotting. This thing comes across as a female version of INDIANA JONES but lacked the supernatural or spiritual side of those films that lofted them into the stratosphere of awesomeness seldom obtained. Because the last act is very “mediocre” aside from some of the cool traps and puzzles, I kind of felt let down. Then again I had pastors that did mission trips to South America that had more punch than this story. Not to mention supernatural stuff most people can’t handle. Anyway, this doesn’t mean that Alicia did a bad job or that the movie's producers didn’t accomplish what they set out to do.  

In the United States I guess you can sort of say this thing bombed, but worldwide it appeared to be only about $7 million short of its “profit” mark if you are using a formula of needing to make 3 times the production budget to turn a profit. As of the writing of this review, it doesn’t look like we have a sequel to this thing on the way or in the works. 

Is this movie better than a lot of other adventure films? The answer to that is heck yes. I actually really enjoyed some of the stuff they were able to pull off in this film. The cinematic quality is very high. On top of this, we got a wonderful score, near-perfect pacing, and I thought Alicia Vikander made a really good Lara Croft.

Overall I have to give this one a 5 out of 7. There are a few things that would have bumped this up for me. Part of that small list includes not casting Goggins. Sorry dude, it’s not you it’s me.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF WARNER BROS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.