The times where video game turned to movie adaptations don’t seem to change. Not a lot of people gets excited about them because nearly all of them end up as garbage. With the new version of Tomb Raider being the newcomer on the trail of stinkers, there’s a 50/50 chance this could stay grounded in a daring adventure that might be worth the risk.
Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is living an independent life while trying to get away from her family’s legacy. Hoping to solve the mystery of her father’s (Dominic West) disappearance seven years ago, she embarks on a journey to the last -known destination, the island of Yamatai, where he was last seen, hoping to uncover the truth.
Never played the video games for which this was based on, but they were very popular franchise when they game out. However, I did watch both Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movies with Angelina Jolie in the main role, and they really aren’t that good because it was just plain cheesy for action movies in the early 2000s. But this isn’t a reboot of the original, it’s based on the 2013 reboot game that everyone said it was brilliant. Excited? Nah, as much as like Vikander as an actress, the trailers weren’t that impressive. Norwegian director Roar Uthaug (The Wave) tackles what could’ve been a terrible adaptation, what we have is an alright action film that comes close to what the game might be.
Vikander portraying Lara when she was first announced was an interesting choice at first, and she definitely gave a committed performance for a huge action character. I really thought Vikander was perfect in this role. She really was the biggest standout that I’m going to remember the entire movie by because it feels like she had the character traits from the game. And she gave a much better performance than Jolie.
Most of the action sequences were nothing groundbreaking, but they aren’t bad. There’s a scene where Lara is on a rusty airplane near a waterfall that was the closest to tension to be found.
The story itself does push itself as an origin story and it pushes a lot of exposition from anybody just making the film’s pace drag a bit along with some lines of dialogue that weren’t well-written, and it goes for a very predictable storyline to follow through. The trailer even had the final shot, which I knew even before seeing it. But some elements of the story and the action in the third act really reminded me a lot of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
As far as video game movies comes about, Tomb Raider probably the closest that’s pretty close to the source material. This was a lot better than Assassin’s Creed, which her husband, Michael Fassbender, starred in. The recent news of the sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider makes me wanna rent the game to see if it’s worth the hype. And if a second installment comes around in the next couple of year, I won’t hesitate to be looking forward to the next adventure Craft goes on.
Tomb Raider doesn’t quite break the video game curse, but because of Alicia Vikander’s strong performance and some solid action set pieces to consider this fairly decent.
Grade: C+
DC's Take 