QR Film Reviews: Tomb Raider
Uthaug's Tomb Raider is an entertaining reboot to the Lara Croft series, but for all of its box office success, it leaves no lasting impressions.
★★½
Based off the 2013 video game of the same name, Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) tries to relocate her father on an island off the coast of Japan after his mysterious disappearance 7 years previously.
The film initially spends time introducing an array of characters who are not seen later in the film. These include her boxing companions, her bike courier colleagues and a client who is taken by her looks but can't muster the courage to ask her out. It then sees a long, fast-paced bike chase which ends in Croft being arrested by the police. Although initially entertaining, there was surely a more coherent and efficient way of showing us the profession of the main character without the need to spend half an hour elaborating on so many plot irrelevant characters.
Character development is something the film seems to struggle with in general. Croft meets the drunken and inhospitable Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) in Hong Kong who she pays off to take her to the island of Yamatai. Despite not knowing anything about one another, besides that both their fathers were missing, they quickly show companionship towards one another and we are encouraged to care about their relations despite Lu Ren having only been in the film for a number of minutes.
When they get washed up on shore together after a powerful storm, we find out that Ren has been already captured and his father killed. But again, this evokes no emotional response from the audience as we haven't received enough of an incentive to care. It is rather confusing then that they work hard to protect each other throughout the film and seem visibly affected by each other's distress. It would have made far more sense for Ren to take the role of an antihero and have his goals be made unclear (as was implied upon his introduction), than to be presented as an undeveloped hero with an extremely contrived character motivation.
Similarly, after Croft's father (Dominic West) is introduced to the film much later on, his appearances become progressively less and less frequent to the point that his absence would have hardly affected the progression of the second half of the film at all. When he dies heroically during the climax, no one is shedding a tear. Considering Croft's father was the entire reason she came to the island, it was quite disappointing to find him as inconsequential to the film's action and plot development as he was.
And don't get me wrong - action films are rarely intricate tales with carefully woven twists, but the complete lack of unpredictability in this film made it feel simply bog-standard as far as characters and plot were concerned. It's not that this lack of substance made the film unenjoyable, but there were a lot of missed opportunities and unimaginative, if not slightly lazy plot-lines that left Tomb Raider feeling quite clumsy and unpolished.
Still, for all of my criticism of the film it was not without its high-points. Vikander and her in-film nemesis Walton Goggins, who plays Mathias Vogel, are nothing short of brilliant during their tense scuffles. Their fight during the climax of the film brings with it many cliches but keeps us glued to our seats all the same. There are several tongue-in-cheek moments - Croft being chased through a forest, trapped inside of a crashed plane, thrown off a waterfall, or almost killed by a collapsing floor, that were engineered fantastically and reminded us that thrills and exploration are at the very heart of the Tomb Raider series. Furthermore, the final scene inside of the tomb, while nothing special as far as plot-execution was concerned, embraced the original video-game storyline and many of the traps found within the tomb quite wholeheartedly.
The end of the film saw Lara picking up her trademark pistols in true melodrama, action-film style, but it was a respectable nod to the original series all the same. It also introduced a cliffhanger, even if it was a very predictable one, which sets up the prospect of a sequel.
Tomb Raider is one of those films you will enjoy more if you're bored at home and need something easy to follow. It entertains, but I wouldn't advise it to anyone who is expecting great scriptwriting and character portrayal or a complex plot-line. You're best leaving this one until it's shown on TV.
By James Lavery