TOMB RAIDER – Review

Between the evil Japanese spirit, hidden tomb, and mysterious puzzles, TOMB RAIDER has all of the trappings that people love in B-movie adventure films. The aesthetics and overarching story are all there, but it’s missing just the right amount of fun that the film’s visuals are pushing it towards. Sure, it moves well, but the actors stumble more over the clunky dialogue than the jungle branches and tomb traps.

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is the daughter of an eccentric adventurer (Dominic West) who vanished when she was a young girl. Now in her twenties, Lara spends her days training in a gym in East London and working as a bike courier. Determined to forge her own path, she refuses to take the reins of her father’s global empire just as she rejects the idea that he’s truly gone. When she finally decides to sign the papers acknowledging his death, a clue comes to her giving her hope that maybe he isn’t dead after all. To finally solve the puzzle of his mysterious death, Lara ventures to an island off of Japan where her father’s former team is attempting to discover the lost tomb of Himiko.

Vikander makes the physicality of the role look easy despite the demands of the physical stunts. Even though many scenes are augmented with unnecessary CGI, the film isn’t afraid to show her dirty, bloody, and bruised. She may be game for the action, but the script prefers to retread the same plodding details of the curse and the island instead of letting her kick into action mode. Besides a tense and well-staged sequence involving a rusted-out plane (something straight out of the game), the few action set pieces don’t make much of an impression or live up to the intensity that they are aiming for.



It becomes clear very early on that this is an origin story for the character, and with that, you’re not going to get as much of the RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK as you’d hope. What you get in its place is one flashback after another. The screenwriting team of Geneva Robertson-Dworet & Alastair Siddons goes heavy on emphasizing the father-daughter relationship. Providing Lara a motivational push is one thing, but the film’s desire to be taken as a serious family drama often feels forced.

As happy as I am that the studio learned from the mistakes of the previous films and decided not to just cater to teen boys (there isn’t an unnecessary shower scene this time around), the producers lean a little too heavily into the BATMAN BEGINS formula. The crafted an origin-story based on the success of the rebooted video game series but lost the sense of fun associated with the title. It’s as if the film was afraid to play in the sandbox it designed for itself. When you have a title like TOMB RAIDER, you expect a certain level of light-hearted escapism. While I don’t wish the series to reclaim the silliness or the teen-boy-ogling of the previous films, it would go a long way if they leaned slightly little more into the pulp territory.

When TOMB RAIDER embraces the jungle survival genre, it starts to step in the right direction. The bow-and-arrow and gun violence are somewhat surprising (without reaching RAMBO levels of gore), but the scenes are still missing that certain level of excitement. However, the film really comes alive with its entertaining finale which feels straight out of INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s the first time that the film decides to live up to its name and have fun with the premise.

The nice thing for non-gamers is that you don’t have to have played any of the games to pick up what is going on. In fact, it goes out of its way to explain every step of the way. Since this is a “video game adaptation” and because that genre carries such a negative track record, I’m happy to report that the curse is over – this is the best video game adaptation I’ve seen. While TOMB RAIDER won’t be remembered for its stunts, story, or action, it does now hold the high-score in terms of video game adaptations. It doesn’t feel like a game-changing moment, but it’s a level up from the rest.

Overall score: 3 out of 5

TOMB RAIDER opens everywhere March 16th