Review: Tomb Raider
Fun fact: Alicia Vikander is the second actress to take on the iconic videogame heroine, Lara Croft, within three years after winning her Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Whilst Vikander is no Angelina Jolie, who famously incarnated the buxom badass in 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and its 2003 sequel, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, neither is Jolie Vikander. Both are compelling in wholly different ways and, if Vikander is not as ideal a physical embodiment of Lara as Jolie was, she certainly brings the physicality required for the role.
Before Vikander's Lara gets to the leaping, swinging, running across crumbling surfaces, and being slammed about like a rag doll that is part and parcel of tomb raiding, she's introduced in a boxing ring showing off her kickboxing and mixed martial arts skills as well as a truly impressive set of abs, which are more 12-pack than 6-pack. Though she works as a bike messenger, Lara is actually an heiress, though she's reluctant to come into her massive inheritance as it would mean officially acknowledging the death of her archaeologist father, Lord Richard (Dominic West), who disappeared seven years earlier in his quest to find the final resting place of a mythical queen named Himiko, who was buried alive for possessing black magic. When she meets with her father's business partners Ana Miller (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Mr. Yaffe (Derek Jacobi) to reluctantly sign the papers, she comes across a puzzle containing a clue, the first of many breadcrumbs that shed further light in her father's secret research on Himiko.
Deciding to trace her father's footsteps, she heads to Hong Kong where she convinces Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), the son of the captain who ferried her father to the unreachable island where he believed Himiko to be buried, to take her to the very same remote and dangerous location. From thereon in, Tomb Raider truly puts Lara through her paces as she and Lu Ren as they withstand a violent storm and rocky waters only to land on the island and become prisoners of Matthias Vogel (Walton Goggins), the Kurtz-like leader of an expedition who have been on the island for at least seven years vainly searching for Himiko's tomb. Calmly disclosing that he killed her father and congratulating her for bringing him Richard's notebooks which pinpoint the tomb's exact location, Vogel forces Lara to help him and his key crew navigate through what is essentially one never-ending booby trap.
Though what ensues is fairly predictable, there's no denying that Norwegian director Roar Uthaug is more than capable of staging some breathtaking moments (one shot of Lara underwater next to the length of a capsized boat is truly memorable) and nifty action sequences. Though her ability to overcome various obstacles like churning rapids, waterfalls, variations of crumbling surfaces, hurtling spiked logs, and Vogel's armed and muscled henchmen more than strains credulity, there's a strong sense that, whilst she has the ridiculously high threshold of pain usual to this genre, her true power lies in her grit and determination. Nor is her intelligence to be diminished as she deploys it not only to solve the various traps in the tomb but to outwit Vogel. Moreover, in this day and age, credit must be given to screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastir Siddons for not falling back on the typical sexualised image of Lara.
Tomb Raider may not break any new ground, but it's a terrifically fun popcorn film that's headlined by the ever-engaging Vikander, who firmly establishes her action and blockbuster credentials with this outing.
Tomb Raider
Directed by: Roar Uthaug
Written by: Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Alastir Siddons
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Nick Frost, Hannah John-Kamen, Antonio Aakeel, Jaime Winstone
