Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Angelina Jolie brings video game vixen Lara Croft to life in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. For those of you who may not have heard of Tomb Raider, the video game, Lara Croft is a wealthy adventurer who travels the globe searching for ancient artifacts. She is basically a modern day Indiana Jones; only she looks better in skin-tight shorts and a tank top. After an annoying opening scene, where Lara battles a homicidal robot inside a tomb--only to have it turn out to be a training exercise--Tomb Raider finally gets moving with a grand plot about how a secret organization called the Illuminati seeks to rule the world with the use of a special clock. Unknown to her, Lara's deceased father had stashed this very same clock in her mansion, where it remains hidden until it activates during the alignment of all the planets in the solar system. When Lara finds it, she discovers two things: the clock is some sort of a key, and that it is running backwards, as if counting down to something.

Before she can do anything else, the clock is stolen from Lara by a team of heavily armed commandos who invade her mansion at night. They work for Manfred Powell (Iain Glen), who in turn is a member of the Illuminati. Although the enemy has the clock, it is only the first step towards finding the two pieces of an ancient triangle that can control time itself. Using clues that her father has left her, Lara heads for the jungles of Cambodia to locate the first half of the triangle before the enemy does. This sets the scene for a spectacular sequence within an ancient temple with stone warriors and a multi-armed giant with swords that nicely recalls the work of special effects master Ray Harryhausen.

Tomb Raider is one of the first Hollywood films to shoot on location in Cambodia, and it uses the exotic locale to good effect. Cambodia's forgotten temples, all overgrown with massive trees, serves as a perfect backdrop for Lara's adventures. Director Simon West brings a lot of style and kinetic energy to the film, but pulls back sharply on the bloodletting. The result is yet another action movie where people run around with guns blazing, and yet nobody gets shot. The film never feels as if it has been completely unleashed, and it suffers for it. Another let down comes at the climax, which takes place amid a giant swirling mechanism that serves as a representation of the solar system (and also appears to be inspired from a scene in The Dark Crystal) where Lara and the main villain battle it out one on one while the whole place self-destructs around them. This feels tacked on, as if the filmmakers felt the audience needed to see Lara kick the bad guy's butt, when in fact a much better and smarter method of dispatching the villain (Lara, caught in a time wave, catches the bad guy's knife in mid-toss and flips it 180 degrees so that the baddie is struck with his own blade) was discarded in favor of a more mundane climatic battle.

Still, despite its flaws, I enjoyed Tomb Raider, and Angelina Jolie is in large part the reason why. Confident, smart and sexy, Jolie effortlessly sells each scene she's in, and she's fun to watch. The DVD is loaded with extras, including a great commentary by director West (who reveals that the production spent a lot of time and special effects money on hiding Jolie's many tattoos), as well as the standard "making of" features. There are also four deleted scenes, an alternative main title sequence, and DVD-ROM features, as well. --SF

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