Alicia Vikander’s astonishingly average take on the headstrong heroine made famous by the 90s video game franchise
Director: Roar Uthaug
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins
Running time: 118 mins
Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl) stars as the latest regeneration of Tony Gard’s video game creation in Tomb Raider. A film, directed by Roar Uthaug (The Wave, Escape), based on the 2013 version of the game’s ‘new’ origin story. Dominic West (Pride, Genius) is Lara’s father, the anthropologist ‘Lord Richard Croft’ who has been missing, presumed dead, for seven years since going off on a dangerous ethnological exploration to discover the resting place of the ancient Japanese queen Himiko on a remote and hazardous island. Lara Croft arrives at the stylish Croft HQ to sign papers handing over the family firm to the company lawyer, an extended cameo for Derek Jacobi (Vicious, The King’s Speech) and the family trustee Ana Miller, played by Kristen Scott Thomas (Darkest Hour, The Party), whose persistent quizzical look seems as though she’s as unconvinced about this as everybody else.
After a gruelling bike chase sequence which has two-wheeled echoes of Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, the plot stammers into life when Lara Croft is handed a Japanese puzzle withholding a note from her late father. This spirals into a quest of hidden rooms, strange puzzles, tombs (dur) and Walton Goggins’ (American Ultra, Diablo) menacing Mathias, who seems to have a more sinister reason for wanting to find the ancient tomb.
The problem with the film is that it’s trying to do too much at once. West opens the film with one of his many nonsensical voice-overs which have no weight to them other than to explain the plot. These are intermingled with creepy flashbacks to a young Lara Croft and her father with the latter planting cringe-worthy kisses on her forehead or putting two fingers to his lips before holding them in the air, quite like the three-finger signal that would later become quite prominent in The Hunger Games. However, this one has no charm to it and West becomes quite irritating with the daddy-daughter antics rather than endearing. The film expects these sequences to be enough to win the audience over and it’s one of many examples of the film not spending enough on the ‘origin’ part of the origin story. The reluctance to do the donkey-work here, means later in the film when the action does come it rarely makes sense.
It’s difficult to keep track of their motives or, in some cases, the audience is simply not told why particular events are unfolding
Vikander tries her best with the ropey script, but even she struggles to salvage any substance from her character. All too often do the puzzles seem to solve themselves or it’s a matter of somebody spinning a few circles to unlock them without explaining how it works or how they know to do this. There is a huge amount of characters standing around, pointing at things, and explaining what they are, often not making any sense or moving the plot forward. Vikander’s journey is strange at best, she starts the film being beaten up in a kickboxing match, and not being able to hit an apple with a bow and arrow; to somehow completing death-defying jumps from oblivion-bound plane wreckage while never seeming in any danger whatsoever. Despite this, the only thing that may keep an audience interested is Vikander’s likeability. Fortunately, unlike previous instalments, the female lead is not reduced to wearing barely anything as a substitute for having no interesting traits. Unfortunately, she can do little else to save the film from its overlong running time, lacklustre performances from everyone except herself and a skull-smashingly dull script.
Arguably, the worst thing in this film is characterisation. It’s difficult to keep track of their motives or, in some cases, the audience is simply not told why particular events are unfolding. Mathias repeats numerous times that he ‘can finally go home’ if he can find the tomb, but there is no backstory for him, nor is his condition remotely believable. In addition, when things do eventually go awry, he and other characters persist on making decisions that people would just not make. This, mixed with the meagre action sequences, would be fine in a video game, but it doesn’t reach the mark to appease a film audience, and is one of of many reasons why this film is such a tiresome bore.
Did you know? Daisy Ridley, Summer Glau, Emilia Clarke, Gemma Arterton, Cara Delevigne, Emily Blunt, Olivia Wilde and Kristen Stewart were all rumored to play Lara Croft.
Tomb Raider is in cinemas now
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