Tomb Raider
Dir: Roar Uthaug
2018
**

It has been over twenty years since I’ve played Tomb Raider and I can’t say I remember much about it other than being chased by dogs and dinosaurs, not being able to jump over ledges very well but being impressed with the graphics. The last time I saw the Angelina Jolie adaptation was also the first time back in 2001 and I was less impressed. I do however remember thinking it followed the style of the game enough to regard it as an adequate adaption but then video game adaptions are a funny thing anyway. The first thing that struck me about 2018’s Tomb Raider was just how unlike the original game it was. This however is not surprising, as it is based on the 2013 re-boot of the game that totally passed me by. The 2013 re-boot of the game seems to have been inspired by Raiders of the Lost Arc and Lara Croft now seems to be less dynamic as she used to be. To be honest, I had no anticipation for this film, I neither love nor hate the Tomb Raider franchise but I do love a classic adventure film and I like Alicia Vikander. I was also quite excited and intrigued by the choice of Roar Uthaug as director. His 2015 disaster film The Wave was pretty good and a nice change from the usual Hollywood-centric action film. However, the film never reeled me in, I was totally open but nothing of interest and nothing I hadn’t seen before happened. In all honesty, the first chapter of the film got on my nerves. Following the disappearance of her father seven years ago, Lara Croft makes a living as a bike courier. She trains at a local gym, lives in a squalid flat (in a very expensive area of London) but has no money. Her clothes are designer and her bike is top of the range – but she’s skint. Her colleagues challenge her one day to act as a fox in an urban hunt involving bicycles. She basically has a tin of paint attached to the back of her bike and around a hundred other cyclists have to chase her and catch her before the paint runs out. If they don’t, she wins £500. She agrees and is chased around London. Thing is, she is chased around impossible areas of London to access by bike and the geography is all wrong. Why do films do this? So many people will know that Fleet Street isn’t next to Brick Lane, they are two of London’s most famous streets and popular tourist destinations. As a proud Londoner it irks me. Also, she could not live in a Brick Lane apartment – even if it is just a room – on a courier’s salary. More annoying is that after she is arrested by the police for her illegal bike chase (and reckless vandalism regarding the paint she’s left everywhere) it turns out she has inherited her fathers fortune (her father is played by Dominic West – for the second time following 2014’s Testament of Youth), it’s just that she hasn’t signed the papers claiming any of it. She thinks that if she does she is declaring him dead, ignoring the fact that she could just give it back to him should he return alive at any time. But no, the family mansion is falling into disrepair and all his stuff is rotting away. I know the idea is to make Lara an everywomen and not the privileged character she was originally but actually this new Lara is dumb and hard to like. The ‘hard up’ message is a little forced, and if you want to get into the poor versus the privileged then what about the big empty mansion that has been abandoned? How many people could live there. I’m wandering from the film review here I know but this sort of bad writing really hacks me off. Her father’s business partner Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas in a pointless five minute cameo) posts her bail and warns her that if she does not claim her vast inheritance, her father's country estate, Croft Manor, will be sold off. Just as she is about to sign Mr. Yaffe, an associate at Croft Holdings (Derek Jacobi in a pointless three minute cameo) gives her a puzzle her father left to her in his will. She grabs it and forgets to sign – Jesus Christ she’s annoying. Lara follows a clue and gains access to a secret chamber in her father's tomb. There she finds a pre-recorded video message from him detailing his research into Himiko, the mythical Queen of Yamatai who was said to command the power over life and death. Her father warns Lara to destroy all of his research so it doesn’t get into the wrong hands (namely a secret organisation called Trinity who also want the power of Himiko) but Lara decides not to so she can investigate further. She decides to pawn the necklace her father gave her before he left and tells the pawn shop owner (Nick Frost) that it is valuable. He doesn’t check, he simply believes her because she is pretty, and hands over ten thousand pounds – because that is exactly how pawn shops work. To make the scene even worse, Lara purposely knocks hot coffee over Frost when he lowers his office, which doesn’t make us warm to her any more. It also features Jaime Winstone. With her money, Lara travels to Hong Kong where she hires Lu Ren, captain of the ship Endurance, to sail into the Devil's Sea and the island of Yamatai. Lu Ren turns out to be the son of the captain Lara's father hired to take him to the island seven years ago. The ship runs into rocks in a violent storm as they approach the island. Lu Ren, a self-confessed experienced sailor, clearly doesn’t know how to sail in bad weather or use radar. Lara is of course washed ashore unscathed and barely wet where she is knocked unconscious by a strange figure. She is revived by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins, the leader of an expedition to locate Himiko's tomb. The expedition has been funded by a shadowy organization called Trinity that seeks to harness and weaponize Himiko's power. Vogel takes Lara prisoner, claiming that he killed her father and intends to use Richard's research to continue his expedition. Now don’t get me wrong, Walton Goggins is a good actor but he’s such a lazy and obvious choice of bad guy and at this point I actually wanted him to succeed. He adds Lara and Lu Ren to his slave force but soon Lara escapes with the help of Lu (after learning Vogel murdered his father), who stays behind after being severely injured. Lara is washed down a wild river, jumps onto the wreck of crashed WW2 bomber and parachutes into thick jungle. This particular series of action sequences is more than tiresome. Somehow, we are supposed to believe that a WW2 bomber – that has sat on the edge of a waterfall for over seventy years on an island partial to extreme weather, will suddenly crumble when a 91lb girl steps on it for a few seconds. I’m also pretty sure it is near impossible to parachute just by holding the parachute pack without having it on your back – keeping hold of it would be hard enough – but add the fact that all the material has rotten away, I don’t buy the physics. I’m all for a bit of fantasy and escapism but this action sequence felt like it was making up for lost time. Lara sleeps but wakes again after nightfall and is forced to kill a Trinity guard when she is nearly discovered. She follows a mysterious figure wandering the island and discovers that the figure is her father, who stayed on the island to prevent Trinity from finding Himiko's tomb. After Lara convinces him that she is real and not a figment of his imagination, Richard treats her injuries. Despite his protests, Lara sets off to recover his research from Vogel's camp. Lara makes contact with Lu Ren, and he, along with the fishermen, stage distractions that allow Lara to infiltrate the Trinity camp and recover her father's research. In the ensuing chaos, Richard makes his way to Himiko's tomb and is captured by Vogel, who persuades Lara to open the tomb. I say captured, he just walks up to them like an idiot. The film then turns into full on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade mode when the party navigates a series of booby traps before locating Himiko's sarcophagus. Two Trinity soldiers attempt to remove her corpse but become infected by Himiko's "power", which is actually a disease so potent that mere physical contact triggers immediate bodily disintegration, and reduces those infected to an aggressive zombie-like state. Images around the tomb reveal that Himiko, who was apparently immune to the virus herself and was a carrier, came to the island voluntarily rather than being forced as the legends imply, sacrificing herself to contain the virus. Himiko and her lot must have had more money then sense, as the elaborate tomb must have cost a fortune, when all she had to do was ask her friends to burn her body once she died – job done! Vogel concludes that he cannot remove Himiko's body and instead settles for detaching a finger, which he seals in a pouch. In the confusion, Lara and Richard overpower the remaining soldiers, though Vogel escapes and Richard becomes infected. Knowing there is no cure, Richard proposes destroying Himiko's tomb to prevent the disease from spreading across the world - because blowing things up won’t ever end up spreading anything. The fact that a water supply surrounds the tomb seems to go unnoticed. Lara pursues Vogel as Richard sets off a bomb, killing himself and sealing the tomb. Lara confronts Vogel and the two fight. Lara force-feeds him Himiko's severed finger and kicks him into a deep chasm as the infection takes over. She escapes the tomb as it collapses, meets back up with Lu Ren and the fishermen, and commandeers a Trinity helicopter to escape Yamatai. Courier to killer in just under a week. Lara then returns to London, where she formally accepts her inheritance and inadvertently discovers that Trinity's front company, Patna, is actually a subsidiary of Croft Holdings. She proceeds to investigate Trinity further and begins to suspect that Ana Miller is one of their agents who manipulated her into accepting her inheritance in order to have Lara sign over control of Croft Holdings' business operations to her when Richard Croft stopped cooperating with Trinity. Having witnessed Trinity's ruthlessness firsthand, she prepares for her next adventure by going back to the pawn shop, getting her necklace back for the same money she got for it and spending it on two hand guns – her signature guns from the game. It is the only thing I recognised from the game but at this point I didn’t much care. Pawn shops in the UK do not sell guns as we do not have guns in the UK. Sure you can buy guns for hunting and target sports but I’m pretty sure you can’t just rock up to a pawn shop and buy them and I’m also pretty sure most pawn shops don’t have a full arsenal of weapons round the back that customers are welcome to rummage through. The ending is presumptuous in that it suggests they’ll be another film, it’ll be a crime if there is but the fact that the film made less than the first film in 2001 suggests to me that this will soon be a forgotten incident and the end of any further Tomb Raider talk until the next unimaginative young producer walks through the studio doors – which is probably sooner than we’d hope.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Dir: Simon West
2001
***
Adaptations of video games very rarely go well but 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (also known as simply Tomb Raider) was an exception. It’s no masterpiece and I’m not sure anyone looks back on it with that much regard but while it was criticized for its somewhat camp and cartoonish action, those were the two qualities I rather liked about it. Simon West was a pretty good choice of director in my opinion and while I was in the Rhona Mitra camp, Angelina Jolie turned out to be a good choice as Lara Croft after Jennifer Love Hewitt, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Lopez, Ashley Judd, Sandra Bullock, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diane Lane, Demi Moore and Denise Richards were all considered. Any adventure where our hero has to obtain ancient artifacts from the Illuminati is also okay by me. It’s a ridiculous but fun idea and it begins in a ridiculous and fun manner where we find Lara Croft battling a large robot in an Egyptian tomb in pursuit of a diamond. She disables said robot by ripping out its circuits. The diamond, revealed to be a memory card, is inserted into a laptop computer inside the robot to play music. The fight took place in a practice area of Lara's home and the robot was programmed by her technical assistant Bryce (Noah Taylor) to challenge her in combat. Utter nonsense but it came as a relief that the film clearly had no intention on being held seriously. It gets sillier when we are told that the first phase of a planetary alignment, culminating in a solar eclipse, has arrived. In Venice, the Illuminati search for a key that will rejoin halves of "The Triangle", which must be completed by the final phase. Manfred Powell (Iain Glen), an Illuminati member, assures that they are almost ready, but actually has no idea of the location. Lara's butler Hilary (played by Red Dwarf’s Chris Barrie), tries to interest her in several projects, but on account of the anniversary of her father's disappearance, Lara is not interested. She dreams of her father telling her about the alignment and an object linked to it, the Triangle of Light, and awakens to a clock ticking. Lara finds the clock and Bryce discovers a strange device hidden inside. Lara consults a clock expert friend of her father's, Wilson (played by the great Leslie Phillips), who claims no knowledge of the clock or the Triangle when Lara mentions a possible connection. Wilson gives Lara's name to Powell in regards of the clock. Lara encounters Alex West (future Bond Daniel Craig), a fellow tomb raider with unscrupulous methods and for-profit attitude. Lara shows Powell photographs of the clock; she later points out to Bryce that Powell was lying about his knowledge. That night, armed commandos invade the house and steal the clock despite Lara's attempts to fend them off. The next morning, a letter from her father, arranged to arrive after the beginning of the alignment, explains that the clock is the key to retrieve the halves of the Triangle of Light, an object of phenomenal destructive power which grants its wielder power over time and space. The Triangle destroyed the city it was housed in after misuse of its power. It was then separated in half; one was hidden in a Cambodian tomb, the other in the ruined city, now part of modern-day Siberia. Her father urges her to find and destroy both halves before the Illuminati can find it. In Cambodia, West figures out part of the puzzle on how to retrieve the triangle half. However, West is incorrect and Lara figures out the true puzzle, informing West and Powell that what they thought was the correct holder for the key was but a reflection. She reminds Powell that they only have so many seconds before the opportunity is gone for another 5,000 years. Powell, realizing West was wrong and that Lara is right, and that she is the only one who can solve the puzzle, throws her the clock. Lara proves she is right as she inserts the key and the half of the triangle is revealed. Before everyone can leave, the liquid metal which came out with the piece brings the statues in the temple to life and attacks the team killing some members. Lara is left to fight off and destroy a huge six-armed guardian statue which is the last one to come to life. She successfully defeats it and leaves the temple by diving through a waterfall. She then travels to a Buddhist town where a young monk welcomes her. After a worship service, an aged monk who serves as the chief gives Lara some tea and as they converse, he reminds her to get a much needed rest to continue her father's mission, implying that that monk might have been Lara's father's acquaintance. She and Powell arrange to meet in Venice, since each of them has what the other needs to finish the Triangle. Powell proposes a partnership to find the Triangle, and informs Lara that her father was a member of the Illuminati, which she vehemently denies. Though hesitant at first, she, along with Bryce, meets with Powell for the trip to Siberia. Entering the tomb, the teams discover a giant model of the solar system, which activates as the alignment nears completion. Lara retrieves the last half of the Triangle, but when Powell tries to complete it, the halves will not fuse. He realizes that Lara knows the solution to the puzzle, and kills West in order to persuade her to complete the Triangle to save both West's life and her father's. Lara reluctantly complies, and they then struggle for control of the Triangle, with Lara prevailing and saving West's life. Lara then finds herself in a strange alternate existence facing her father Lord Richard Croft (Jolie’s real father Jon Voight). He explains that it is a "crossing" of time and space, and urges her to destroy the Triangle instead of using it to save his life. Lara leaves her father and returns to the chamber, where time is slowly running backwards from the point where Powell killed West. Croft takes the knife Powell threw into West's chest and reverses it, then destroys the Triangle, which returns time to its normal flow and directs the knife into Powell's shoulder. The chamber begins to self-destruct. As everyone turns to leave, Powell reveals to Lara that he murdered her father and stole his pocket watch with a picture of Lara's mother inside as a trophy. Lara and Powell engage in a hand-to-hand fight. Lara kills him, retrieves the pocket watch, and escapes as the chamber crumbles. At the mansion, Hilary and Bryce are shocked to see Lara wearing a dress. She goes into the garden to her father's memorial, then returns inside, where Bryce has a reprogrammed SIMON, ready to challenge Lara once again. Hilary reveals a silver tray holding Lara's pistols, which she takes with a smile. The film gain a lot of attention as it marked the first time Jolie had spoken to her father Jon Voight for many years and the tabloids loved the drama. It was the first time for me that Daniel Craig popped up on my radar and I loved that Chris Barrie was in a big Hollywood movie. Hardcore fans of the game complained that Jolie was right for the part because she was American and not British but what they really meant was that her boobs weren’t as big as the computer game character’s. Daniel Craig put on an American accent so I thought all was fair really, both actors did well in such an outrageously silly film. It really was no masterpiece, and to be honest the first few years of the new millennium were disappointing when it came to the world of cinema but there were far more less fun and entertaining films available at the time and not many female-fronted ones either. It wasn’t such a bad film.