Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished years earlier. Hoping to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance, Croft embarks on a perilous journey to his last-known destination -- a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan.
The tomb raider series is a really long lasting, action packed set of films - with the highlight of the series being when Angelina Jolie playedd Lara. However those days are over and there's a new Lara in town. Alicia Vikander has starred in plenty of other similar films to Lara Croft such as The Danish Girl and Jason Bourne - both great films however how does she match up in this film to her predecessors and her other roles?
My answer is actually quite well. However I don't think that the films plot and themes helped to bring out the best of her. I really liked how we saw a transition of not only her skills of shooting and attacking throughout the film but also seeing her develop as a character from a shaky teenager delivering food around London to successfully unlocking the secrets behind Himiko and the Japanese island. I was also impressed with the character choices within the film and the actors that played the roles, Dominic West played his role of a long lost archaeologist really well and I was particularly impressed with how he had shown age, many action films show a lost person after many years and they have a well trimmed face. But you could definitely tell that he had been lost and abandoned for plenty of years, even using vines to climb trees. Definitely Tarzanesque. If you could let me know your secret then I wouldn't have to keep buying new razor blades, thanks in advance!
Anyways, back to the review! I was impressed with the audio too. The variety of diegetic and non diegetic audio was great within the film, the correct usage of background music to raise tension really shone through and left the audience feeling tense and on edge. Especially when the characters were actually in the mountain and even though some parts of the film were questionable; I still really feel the audio in a film can make it or break it and for this film the audio was great! I also liked the variety of different camera angles and shots within the film too, the audience were left nervous when the camera panned up to show Lara hanging off a rusty plane barely on the edge of a waterfall. The close up shots to show the characters expressions and feelings really left me engaged with the film too and left me feeling like I was there with them. Similarly to the audio I feel that camera angles and shots are crucial to a film, and not just because we use them to film! Referring back to the plane scene this gave me flashbacks of playing the uncharted games with Nathan Drake on the ps3, good days!
This film was supposed to create tension and suspense and that's exactly what it did, and it did this really well. I feel that the story as a whole and the plot were relatively strong and provided the audience with plenty of thrills, like I said I feel the story was well put together and the film seemed to make sense too. It had a clear plot which is especially good for an action/adventure film as sometimes they can run off leaving the audience unsure and confused - not in this film. The audience was essentially walked through the whole of the film, this I liked as it meant that everything made sense, the plot was also really intriguing. A queen that killed millions with just the touch of her hand? Rivers of blood (a bit grim)? A queen that was exiled and had to be kidnapped and buried under a mountain to stop her getting out? That sounds interesting and impressive to me! And in theory this was displayed really well with a few plot twists to keep the film interesting. The film wasn't all positive however...
I do have lots of positive things to say about the film because I liked it, but no film is perfect and this film certainly wasn't one of those. Even though I said the plot was good, and it was to be fair, there were still parts where I was left confused and saying "how the heck did that just happen?". For example right at the very end how did Lara manage to grapple up a mountain that was collapsing in on itself? Surely instead of just grabbing onto a rock she would've been crushed to death, similarly to when she was escaping the tunnels inside; surely she would've just been buried to death but adventure films always have an interesting way of keeping the main character alive as evident here... I was also a little unsure about how Lara's sidekick, Lu Ren managed to go from falling off a boat trying to shoot intruders to being able to use a fully automatic gun with military like accuracy in a matter of days, this confused me slightly but hey maybe I'm just being a little bit picky. I was a bit unsure of the relevance of some parts of the film too, such as a random guy being too scared to admit he had a crush on Lara or the fight where Lara was beaten up in the boxing ring. Some of the scenes like this really left me wondering why they were actually included in the film at all and even though I said I found the mystery of the film interesting there were some parts that were slightly cliche to say the least. Chasm of souls? Order of trinity? Maybe these may be able to pulled off in Indiana Jones MAYBE. But here they had a negative and childish impact on the film and in my opinion they were a little bit over the top for my liking.
The film also had a few character issues, despite popular beliefs I thought Alicia was really good in her role. Daniel Wu also stood out from the crowd for his good acting although I just didn't feel very engaged with some of the characters as I feel is appropriate in this kind of film; I just didn't feel a connection with them and I rarely felt tense in scenes where any of the main characters weren't there simply because I didn't really understand any of them so I was slightly confused at those points.
As I've said I enjoyed the film but as I'm not a massive Lara Croft fan I probably think this is why really, the plot and idea of the film was good but I just feel that it could have been pushed a bit more to its limits where it previously has been pushed before. I really think some more well known actors would've done it any harm at all as the advertising for this film was relatively poor and small scale. I did leave the cinema slightly confused about some of the scenes too as well, mainly how about how Lara managed to survive some scenarios and just why they didn't really go for it with this film as I got the impression it was held back slightly. And I feel that this is probably why the film has lots of mixed reviews elsewhere because it was a decent film but with the awesome plot and a refresh of characters I feel a little bit more could have been done.
In hindsight though it was a good film, maybe one I would need to watch a second time to fully understand and be satisfied with my confusion which is where my cineworld unlimited card comes into play!! Overall I would give this film a 7.
Thank you for reading my review on Tomb Raider, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it.
Comments