In Review: Tomb Raider

Synopsis: Lara Croft, the fiercely independent daughter of a missing adventurer, must push herself beyond her limits when she discovers the island where her father disappeared.

Review: Released last week on most Video On Demand services. Tomb Raider is the movie reboot of the successful games series, which pretty much follows the template laid down by the rebooted game series.

In this latest version of the series, Lara Croft is a younger and less experienced explorer. In many ways. This film is her origin story and reveals how she becomes the famed archeological treasure hunter that we come to know and love.

Alicia Vikander is pretty good casting as the younger Lara Croft and Dominic West proves to be a good choice as her onscreen father. Walton Goggins puts in a fairly competent performance as the main villain of the piece Mathias Vogel.

The action and adventure of this movie is a bit more grounded than what we saw done in the previous Tomb Raider films, which starred Angelina Jolie in the titular role. This version of Lara Croft is less competent and is pretty much learning on the fly. We get introduced to her as a very rough and tumble character who is working for a takeout food place as a delivery person.

It is only when she chooses to accept her inheritance that the adventure begins and it is only because Lara chooses to ignore her late father’s warnings to not seek out the end game of the quest that he was on. In a nutshell, she can’t seem to help herself.

We get some light comedic moments from Nick Frost who puts in a fun performance as a shady pawnbroker who Lara pawns her necklace too in order to cover travel costs.

Overall. This is a pretty good attempt at a Tomb Raider movie and works as very much an origin story for Lara Croft. The film ends on a bit of a tease as Lara learns that her late father’s estate owns the company that her father warned her about. The same company that Vogel was working on behalf of.

Summing up. This film is an okay movie. It’s not reinventing the wheel or anything special, but it does entertain and showcase some pretty good stunt work and CGI.