Tomb Raider (2018) Review

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Seven years after her father's disappearance, Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) discovers her father's secret research office.  Lara discovers Richard Croft (Dominic West) was hunting for the tomb of a an ancient queen of Japan, Himiko, who was said to command power over life and death.  Lara decides to follow her father's trail, which leads her to the island of Yamatai, in the middle of the dangerous Devil's Sea.  Lara ends up shipwrecked on the island, where she is rescued by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), who is also looking for the tomb of Himiko.  Vogel uses Lara, and everyone else who ends up on Yamatai, as slave labor to excavate the island for the tomb.  Lara manages to escape Vogel and is forced to fight his men and survive the elements to free the slaves, escape the island, and stop Vogel from taking the power over life and death from Himiko.


What Works:

As far as video game adaptations go, Tomb Raider, along with Need For Speed, are the cream of the crop.  It hit pretty much all the story beats I expected, had some fun action, over the top moments, and some actual tomb raiding.  It was pretty much exactly what I expected, and it was fun.

Alicia Vikander does a great job as Lara Croft.  She's likable, funny, tough but not to a cartoonish level.  And her motivation makes sense.  She is an excellent protagonist and keeps the movie grounded.

The scene where Lara's boat crashes into the reef is well done.  Along with Lara's fight against a henchman in the muddy jungle, they are the highlights of the movie.


What Sucks:

I was very excited to see Walton Goggins as the villain in this movie.  He's an excellent actor who is great in everything he does.  He's my favorite part of The Hateful Hate, and has some amazing guest roles in both Community and Sons of Anarchy.  But he was pretty wasted in this role.  It's not his fault, the filmmakers just didn't give him enough to do.  It's similar to Christoph Waltz in Spectre.  Great actors.  They just weren't given enough character to work with.

The story really isn't anything special.  It's exactly what I expected and didn't surprise me in any way. It's fine.  It's better than most video game movies, but it's not great.


Verdict:

Tomb Raider is one of the best video game movies out there.  But's it's just an ok movie.  It's got good parts and bad parts, but it doesn't do anything special and probably won't be remembered after awhile.

 6/10: Ok 

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