Huge shout out to scene creek for the screening pass.
Release Date: March 16, 2018
Genre: Action, Adventure
MPAA: PG
I’ve been a Tomb Raider fan for years. I played the original games on the Playstation when I was a lot younger, and I enjoyed the Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft:Tomb Raider (2001). So I was definitely intrigued to see what a Tomb Raider reboot would look like, especially after Crystal Dynamics did such an amazing job with the video game Tomb Raider origin story. Let’s see if the movie actually does the video game franchise some justice.
When I first saw some images of this movie that were posted online, I was definitely optimistic about the movie. I thought Alicia looked very similar to the video game counterpart and it looked like they were going for the grittier side of the video games. The first trailer however didn’t light a fire in my heart to go see it right away, so i’m glad I got a pass to go see it.
Tomb Raider is an action and adventure film that follows Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she finds herself on the island where her father disappeared.
Tomb Raider is directed by Roar Uthaug. Which is a director I’ve never even heard of. I thought he did an alright job. I feel like once you’ve seen one movie like this you’ve seen them all, it felt like a paint by numbers film, it was very by the book on directing. Which isn’t a bad thing, especially for a video game adaptation and also from a director I’ve never heard of. Directing in my opinion was fine.
Tomb Raider is written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Alistar Siddons and Evan Daughtery. I am not familiar with any of these writers. I thought the script wasn’t the greatest, there were a couple of jokes and one-liners that just fell flat for me. It had a fine script. Nothing special or ground breaking.
Tomb Raider stars Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, Dominic West stars as Lord Richard Croft, and Walton Goggins as Mathias Vogel.
Alicia Vikander’s filmography consists of Ex Machina (2014), and Jason Bourne (2016). I think Alicia Vikander is excellent, the two movies i’ve seen with her in it I’ve really enjoyed, especially Ex Machina (2014), check that one out if you haven’t seen it as its very underrated. I have picked up The Danish Girl (2015) that stars her and Eddie Redmayne that I am quite excited to check out, she actually won an oscar for her role in that film. But I thought Vikander was great as Lara. As this is a reboot, I don’t want to compare this film really at all to the two Angelina Jolie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider films (2001 & 2003), but I really preferred Vikanders take on the character more than Jolies (however I also prefer the new Tomb Raider Video Game reboot, so maybe thats why). But yes, I thought Vikander was great in this role, and I thought she played Lara Croft admirably.
Dominic West’s filmography consists of The Forgotten (2004), The Wire {TV Series} (2002-2008), Punisher: War Zone (2008), Arthur Christmas (2011), Money Monster (2016), and Finding Dory (2016). I actually really like Dominic West, McNulty is my favourite character in The Wire (So far, I haven’t finished the series yet). I also thought he played a great bad guy in Punisher: War Zone (2008). He is a talented actor, and I quite enjoyed him in this.
Walton Goggins filmography consists of Shanghai Noon (2000), House Of 1000 Corpses (2003), Predators (2010), Cowboys & Aliens (2011), Lincoln (2012), Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Prey {Video Game} (2017). I knew I recognized this guy when I was watching this movie, but I couldn’t put the exact film I remember seeing him in, ended up being more than I expected but he was good in Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015). I thought he played a by the books bad guy in this, he was fine. I don’t really know what else to say about it.
Other than my problems with the script being fine and the director being fine, I found the use of the green screen in places very noticeable. I don’t know if thats just because I have seen a lot of movies, or if it was just used poorly. It broke the immersion into the film, but didn’t break the film for me entirely.
I also thought there could have been a couple more action scenes, for an action movie it felt a little light for my taste in the action department.
My favourite part of the movie was the subtle homages to the Tomb Raider games, I thought it was a nice piece of fan fare for the fans of the game. There were quite a few of them, it was fun to pick them all out.
Honestly, Tomb Raider (2018), isn’t a bad movie, its not a perfect movie, but there could be much worse ways of spending 2 hours. Does this break the bad movie adaption of video games? the simple answer from this reviewer is no. Is it a step in an alright direction? This review thinks yes.
I give Tomb Raider a 3/5. Its not the greatest movie I have ever seen, but its definitely not the worst. If you’re interested definitely give it a watch!
Until Next Time,
Andrew.