“-Some men like dangerous women.
-Some men are foolish.”
Tomb Raider stars Alicia Vikander and Walter Goggins and tells the story of a young woman named Lara, who after her father goes missing on a mysterious trip, she must now take ownership of Croft Enterprises. But before she takes ownership of the company, Lara begins to find out what happened to her father as he looked for a mysterious tomb off the coast of Japan. Risking everything, Lara travels to her father’s known whereabouts, ensuing in dangerous obstacles along the way. Tomb Raider is actually surprising decent. It’s not great when compared to other films, but considering that our video game adaptation bar is not very high, one could say that this adaptation is not so bad.
This is very much an origin story. Because like many movies now a days, they all have to have a long drawn out origin story. But it’s different here because Tomb Raider doesn’t draw out this origin story for too long before heading into the meat and potatoes of the film. However, the overall story is a bit hit and miss. The film gets a little sappy at some points with the whole father/daughter relationship, but not too much as to take you completely out of the film. 
The ending, even if you haven’t played the Tomb Raider video games, you’ll guess it right away. It’s not as big of a twist as they hoped it would be. But it’s the action throughout the movie that makes up for the bleh story. With gunfights, knife fights, and puzzles that need to be solved (or else everyone dies type of action) the film does its best to keep you on the edge of your seat.
As for the stars of this film, they don’t give us much to write home about in reference to the portrayals of their characters. For me, I wish there had been a little more to Vikander’s performance because it seemed a little lackluster to me. Or maybe it’s because Angelina Jolie actually scares the crap out of me, so I wanted to have those same kind of chills when we see Lara being portrayed on the big screen again. I think overall Vikander did her best with the material that was provided. But all in all, her portrayal didn’t completely gel as many would have hoped. As for Goggins, he plays the same type of character that he always plays. That rough around the edges tough guy that’s slightly annoying. This character screams for it to be portrayed by Goggins.
It’s easy to pick apart what did and did not work for a video game movie. I mean, should we lower our personal standards because video game movies are usually terrible? Maybe not, but I did enjoy Tomb Raider more so than other video game adaptations that have been released in the last couple of years. I mean, I fell asleep during Warcraft because the plot of the film was extremely boring. At least Tomb Raider will give you that action you came for. However, I don’t see this franchise releasing any more movies in the near future.
Tomb Raider
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Walter Goggins, Dominic West, and Kristin Scott Thomas
Rating:
Little Movie Reviews 