Tomb Raider fails Lara Croft

Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

There is something at least moderately superb about the reboot to the Tomb Raider series. The fundamental idea for what the movie is capable of being is at least on screen long enough to draw the interest of viewers, before they are swept away by pablum ripped off from far better movies. It eventually devolves into mildly competent action flick, a movie with nothing interesting to see and little to say about the capabilities of its protagonist. Tomb Raider neither overwhelms nor underwhelms; it’s pretty placid for an action movie.

The good stuff occurs in spurts in acts one and two, when Tomb Raider centers the story on its neophyte adventurer Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander). It's an origin story, but one in which the character's inexperience feels appropriate because the movie portrays her as someone clearly over her head. Her first moments on screen come in the midst of her losing a fight handily, which is followed by yet another loss in a bicycle chase through the streets of London. The set up is there to show a woman evolving into a hero, brave enough to put herself into difficult situations but not savvy or strong enough to pull off a victory. It's interesting to see a character take their lumps in the early going, plow through the difficulties as they level up and improve their strength, stamina, and experience. The culmination comes in act two, where Lara brutally murders a man for the first time. It's a moment of surprise and agony for Lara, the fact that she killed a person and the realization that she's capable of doing such a terrible thing in the first place, and Vikander sells the moment quite well. It’s brutal and effective, an abbreviated window into an action movie.

For some reason though the movie largely abandons that story. Tomb Raider's undercuts Lara's growth by taking a lot of the action and courage out of her hands. She's protected by the male characters around her, whether its her new friend Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) or by her father Richard (Dominic West). Instead of letting Lara fight for herself, the men are always on hand to save her. The change from letting Lara get beaten down to protecting her is abrupt and damaging, undermining one of her defining character traits. If the movie is going to put her in a dangerous situations, it needs to allow her to get out of it on her own accord and not rely on someone else to do it for her. Even Richard's presence in Tomb Raider hurts Lara as a character. Richard serves as a narrative crutch, a figure to both get Lara to go on the adventure and to protect her from making difficult choices. He's not that interesting of a character, or at least allowed to be that interesting of a character aside from some random discussions about hallucinations. Richard only exists because the filmmakers couldn't come up with a better way for Lara to improve, and because tossing in daddy issues is a really easy way to build a character.

Throwing parental problems at an action character has been done, just like the rest of Tomb Raider. As the movie goes on the similarities to the Indiana Jones series become more and more notable, to the point where certain plot points are ripped off blatantly. The action sequences exist, functional and largely uninteresting. The final twist is ultimately asinine, as is Lara's fight with the movie's villain Vogel (Walton Goggins) at the en. Although it is pretty nice to have Boyd Crowder around, Tomb Raider misses a great opportunity to build out a fascinating in concept villain. Perhaps without Richard the movie might have built Vogel into the villain it needs.

Calling Tomb Raider another indictment against adapting video games into movies is a little unfair. This movie was not done well, but the fault lies with the method and not the quality of the source material. After three movies (two campy adventures with Angelina Jolie and this one), there still remains a lot of potential with the Lara Croft character. She's still a great adventurer, smart and strong and very dangerous because of it. Tomb Raider shows the material is there for a good adaptation; it's the filmmakers who keep bringing it down.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

 

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 118 minutes

Genre: Action

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Target audience: People who like video game adaptations and those who hope Alicia Vikander becomes the next big action star.

Take the whole family?: This is pretty violent and it has enough body horror toward the end to discomfort young kids.

Theater or Netflix?: Stay home.

Is Vikander an action star?: Maybe with better material. She sells the painful moments pretty well, although she does succumb to an epic case of Tom Cruise running and spends a decent amount of time shrieking. I'm not sold on her as an action star, but she's good enough to deserve a closer look.

Watch this instead?: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the basis for a lot of Tomb Raider's plot, so it makes sense to just go to the source.