Tomb Raider Movie Review

Better Title: Indiana Croft and the Raiders of Tomb

Lara Croft is the main character from a video game ‘Tomb Raider’. She shares many things in common with Indiana Jones. Both are adventurous treasure seekers, who travel all about the globe. Both have fathers who also were adventurous treasure seekers and both are handy with person weapon. With Indiana, it is his bullwhip; for Croft, she uses a bow and arrow. They fight evil people who are looking to harm the earth and its people. Indiana fights Nazis, and Croft faces off against an evil organization called Trinity.

Lara (Alicia Vikander) is the daughter of a successful London businessman named Lord Richard Croft (Dominic West). But for seven years, he has been missing and presumed dead. Lara will not accept that fact. The entire holdings of the Croft empire would be in her control, if she would only sign the papers that officially declare her Dad is dead. Her guardian Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas) is waiting still for Lara to come to her senses. But instead Lara has found a key hidden by her Dad before he left on a journey many years ago. This leads her to a secret hideaway that her Dad had created, and she learns the reasons he left.

She makes her way to retrace her Dad’s steps by going to Hong Kong and find the ship he last sailed on. She finds the ship, and the ship’s captain is the son of the man that took her Dad years ago. Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) has given up on the past, because he lost his dad at the same time. But Lara convinces Lu Ren to take her to an unknown island where her father was headed. Perhaps they can both find out what happened to both their parents. This island is supposed to hold the tomb of an ancient Queen of Japan.

But a bad storm shipwrecks the two of them on a reef, and they are separated. Lara swims to the island, but is taken hostage by the mysterious group who is also on the island searching for the Queen’s tomb. This group is led by Vogel (Walton Goggins), and he is as ruthless as his thugs. Lu Ren is also there, physically forced into hard labor. Many other lost souls are also being forced to work against their will. The entire focus is to find the tomb, and that is what brought Richard Croft there to search years ago. Vogel claims to have killed Lara’s dad years ago.

But Richard Croft is still alive on the island, and soon he meets up with Lara. But they are captured by Vogel again and they find their way into the tomb. That is when the real Indiana Jones stuff stars to happen. Vogel is working for Trinity, the shadowy evil group who wants to use the special supernatural power of the ancient Queen of Japan for some evil purpose. Richard has pledged his life to stop it, and Lara is there to make sure that something works out right. But there are Indiana Jones-type life-or-death bobby traps to puzzle out. There are ‘National Treasure’ type riddles to figure out.

A Video game based movie is pretty similar to a Comic book based movie. You go into it knowing that it is a bit removed from reality. But with “Tomb Raider”, the writing and direction are trying to make it part of the real world. It could have used director Roar Uthaug playing it with a few winks and nods to the audience. But it strives for a Shakespeare level of literary value that just is not there. It is a very well-done popcorn matinee type movie. Even the soundtrack swells and drumbeats you into how you should feel about a scene.

Alicia Vikander knows that this is less than Oscar worthy material, but she puts in a very physical and high-value performance.  Walton Goggins is great yet unsettling as he plays a very bad man, slowly going nuts on that island. Dominic West is decent and he gets some heroics in the end. Daniel Wu is OK and he gets a few good lines. Kristin Scott Thomas plays a very minor role overall, and then the plot attempts to ‘Keyser Söze’ her character, with does not work out well.

Has this been done before? Yes, of course. Has it been done better?  Yes, but there is a certain charm to Vikander and her attempt to turn Lara Croft into a more brainy, and not quite as busty, woman adventurer. She handles the roles well, but the movie does not live up to what it could have been.