| It’s hard to imagine that video game designers didn’t have Angelina Jolie in mind when they pixelated Lara Croft. A cross between Bruce Wayne and James Bond for the MTV generation, it wouldn’t be much of an understatement to say that Jolie was made for the role… or vice versa.
If only movies were about nothing more than brilliant casting. With its idiotic story and laughably implausible stunts, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life tries far too earnestly to be something it’s not – a legitimate action movie.
The question as to whether video games make for good movie material may be moot at this point, since these two technologies and businesses become more intertwined all the time. The Matrix Reloaded felt like an extended ad for the video game (Enter the Matrix) that was to be released concurrently with the film, and, while the effect was somewhat offensive, it didn’t necessarily make for bad cinema. The Wachowski Brothers dangled the effrontery of their work in our faces, reminding moviegoers of our implicit role in a product-driven culture. After all, if the movie was just an ad for the game, what an effective ad it was.
Unfortunately, Tomb Raider doesn’t function in the desert of the real – it doesn’t bother with such high-falutin issues as the search for reality in a hyper-real world. While Neo and Morpheus struggle with the result of their decision to take the red pill, Lara Croft is out saving an old-fashioned world in an old-fashioned way… and with her old-fashioned tactics come the tired stuff of spy movies.
Director Jan De Bont, who somehow convinced us that a bus really could function as a bomb in Speed, has trouble with the goofy plot here. Lara, who’s a British heiress with a healthy disrespect for authority and an affection for showy stunts, is beckoned by the Queen to stop a deranged scientist from unleashing a plague upon the Earth.
The myth of Pandora’s Box winds up being a historical reality, and Lara, paired with a rogue Scottish ex-lover, has to go on a trans-continental adventure in order to ensure the Box remains in its proper spot, an unidentified locale known simply as "the cradle of life."
Of course, turning Pandora’s Box into a historical treasure is the least of the trespasses made here. Lara’s escapes are often idiotic, gravity-defying feats which make the film more fantastical than it should be. Early in the film, Croft rides a shark to safety, after escaping from a crumbling underwater tomb. Without enough camp and humour to qualify its silliness, Cradle of Life is a pastiche of overblown stunts and convoluted plot points.
And, although Jolie is perfect in the lead with her cartoonishly provocative figure, the comely starlet can’t make this shoddy story work. |
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