| Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Release Date: 06/07/01 Certificate: 12 Official Website Director: Simon West Producers: Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin & Colin Wilson Screenplay: Patrick Massett & John Zinman |
| Fans of Tomb Raider's heroine need no longer try to manouvre her into corners to get a good look at her shapely pixellated form. The PlayStation classic has arrived on the big screen, with the perfect actress in the title role. Angelina Jolie is Lady Lara Croft. Oscar-winner Jolie was pretty fetching to begin with, but after months of working out and training, she not only looks unbelievably sexy, but is coolly convincing throughout the movie's stunts and fights. She moves and speaks with such sultry confidence that a film where she just pottered about not doing much would probably be better than most of Hollywood's output. Certainly better than Pearl Harbor. As rebellious English aristocratic orphan Croft, Jolie's accent is as spot on as the rest of her performance. Lara must track down the two pieces of a triangle, carved from a material found in a meteorite thousands of years ago. When complete, the Triangle can give its bearer the power to freeze time. But the sinister Illuminati are also trying to find the artefact, and they have a Tomb Raider of their own... |
| Among Lara's allies are her faithful family butler, Hillary, played by Red Dwarf's Chris Barrie. While not enjoying the great dialogue that he did in Red Dwarf's heyday, he nevertheless turns in a great performance. It would have been easy to create a stereotyped uptight butler, a clone of Rimmer or Brittas, who just annoys everybody; but the character surpasses this, and they clearly have a lot of affection for each other. |
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| As she travels from one exotic locale to the next, there is plenty of beautifully-captured action on offer, with Lara blasting away two-gunned John Woo-style at killer robots, giant stone monkey statues and Illuminati troops. Rival Tomb Raider Alex West (Daniel Craig) is the only character who can really compete with Lara in the action stakes, and provides a potential romantic interest, particularly if he turns up in subsequent movies. (Tomb Raiders are really gung-ho archaelogists. A bit like Indiana Jones, but harder. Excavation with extreme prejudice). A lot of people have criticised Tomb Raider on the grounds of its plot, or perceived lack of it. It is pretty clear, she's on a quest to save the world by finding a mysterious alien triangle. The thing to remember is that this an adaptation of a computer game. It is the game writ large, and though there were plots in the games, they were secondary to the quest, the chases, the fights, the puzzles, the action. That's the point. But a damn fine movie it makes. 9/10. |
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