Lara Croft:
Tomb Raider
Director: Simon West
Year: 2001
Rating: 5.0
Dear Daddy. Please stop leaving me obscure clues from decades ago that force
me to go save the world from total destruction. It is just too much to have
put on a young child. What if I had grown up to be a bookkeeper in a small
bakery? No more please. Her father is played by her real-life father Jon
Voight who has become the biggest conspiracy nut in the world. A total crackpot.
QAnon squared. Or at least Dear Daddy, don't give me the clues with 16 hours
left to get to Cambodia from England to save the world. You could have had
this message arrive two days ago. Or a week ago. Do you think I can fly?
Well, being Lara Croft she practically can. She gives that superior English
smirk she has down pat and is on her way.
This was fun but I challenge anyone to understand
the plot or be able to relate it and not sound like you are on drugs. Something
to do with those bad guys the Illuminati - a bunch of old wrinkled white
men - who want to control the world - I think - and all these Harry Potter
like devices in Cambodia and the Artic buried beneath the earth. 5,000 years
ago. And in perfect working condition. This device they want to find and
control only works every 5,000 years when all the planets are aligned. And
that is in a few days. Get a move on.
Poor Lara just wants to see her father again
after he went missing when she was a child and so she basically risks the
end of the world to do so. And gets to spend a minute with him as past
and present collide. Or some such nonsense. But on the plus side this was
a big budget bonanza with enough CGI to fill the Pacific. There are multiple
action set-pieces, each one more unbelievable than the last - beginning with
a huge robotic sized Predator like creature programmed to kill her. By her
staff. I have had a few bad bosses but none I wanted to kill. Ya, Margaret
came close.
Lara lives in this huge mansion on a huge
estate and only seems to have two staff. I kept asking myself, who cleans
this place - it is spick and span. And after the episode with the Predator
and one in which about 50 soldiers attack her, who is going to clean up the
rubble. You are richer than God, hire more help. A lot of CGI eye candy here
- the part for Angkor Wat was stunning - but it makes so little sense. Some
good co-stars. Iain Glen pre being Jorah on Game of Thrones; Daniel Craig
pre his Bond days with less charisma than a tin cup and Richard Johnson is
the Illuminati who goes to the Artic (Deadlier Than the Male/Some Girls Do).
Angelina's lips are in fine fettle. They will be in MOMA some day.
Lara Croft: The
Cradle of Life
Director: Jan de Bont
Year: 2003
Rating: 6.5
My flu is still making me feel like a wilted flower and when I do, I need
comfort food and comfort movies. For food that usually means pasta or a burger
and for movies it means films I have seen so it doesn't matter if I doze
off for a bit. And I didn't which must mean I am getting better. Bomba took
four sittings to finish. I thought this was the first in the pair of Angelina's
Lara Croft films, but it is the second. In truth, I have no real memory of
either but Letterbox tells me I have seen this before but never bothered
to write a review. But I moved it from a 6 to a 7. Everyone else seems to
have given it a one or two but I will get the last laugh when it is included
in the Top 100 films someday. This was big fat fun with one action set-piece
following another. It is as if they took the Bond franchise and the Indiana
Jones franchise and put them into a blender and came out with a female with
a jaw line that would make Burt Lancaster jealous. Angelina can do everything
in this film - scuba dive, ride a horse and shoot targets with a shotgun,
some kendo training, paraglide, speak tech gibberish and do it with a tony
British accent. She can do everything it seems but beat the crap out of Brad
Pitt for abusing her.
She lives on an estate larger than Rhode
Island and goes on adventures. In this case she has discovered the underwater
storage of Alexander's collection of treasures. But she is interrupted in
her work by a group of villains who are looking for an orb. Hold on. Rewind
a bit. Was that really Simon Yam? Scuba diving? Yup. Simon plays the head
of a vicious triad gang hired by the big baddie (Ciarán Hinds). You
know Hinds is a baddie because he holds an investor meeting on a private
plane and kills one of them in front of the others. That is Villain 101 stuff.
Hey, wait a second. Rewind please. Was that Richard Ng on the plane not getting
any dialogue? Yup, hope he was well paid. RIP.
Here is where the film goes a little nuts
and may be the reason it isn't held in great esteem. The orb is a mystical
map that reveals the hiding place of Pandora's Box. Ya, that one. It seems
Alexander came across it and hid it where no one would ever find it. It is
the old you open the box and release diseases upon the earth routine. People
get paid to come up with these ideas? I figure it is probably the common
cold which may have killed millions three thousand years ago. Still the villain
wants it to kill most of the earth's population - an early version of Thanos
- except for those rich enough to pay for an antidote. Seems fair but who
is going to do all the work? She teams up with Gerard Butler to stay one
step ahead of the bad guys. Wait. Was that Terence Yin? We have the making
of a Hong Kong film now. Just bring on Maggie Q. No? Angelina couldn't stand
the competition. There are numerous well-done set pieces that take us from
under the ocean to a Shanghai apparently from the 1930s to Hong Kong to Africa
where we enter the land of Lovecroft. I mean Lovecraft.
Tomb Raider
Director: Roar Uthaug
Year: 2017
Rating: 7.5
And children, someday she grows up to be
Angelina Jolie. This is the origin story of Lara Croft and darn if it isn't
pretty good. I wasn't expecting that. It is basically Indiana Jones if Indiana
had been a woman and much prettier. It sets it up for the first 20 minutes
and then full steam ahead with barely a pause to munch on your popcorn. All
really well done with a few great set pieces that are CGI heavy. There is
a terrific foot chase in the harbor of Aberdeen Hong Kong except according
to the film locations it was shot elsewhere but it looked authentic. Alicia
Vikander as Lara is near perfect and it is always good to see Daniel Wu who
is a big star in Hong Kong and had the American TV show Into the Badlands.
The rights to Lara Croft had been picked
up Warner Brothers from Paramount and then MGM bought in wanting to reboot
the character and create a franchise. The film made a solid profit and there
were plans for a sequel, but then covid came around and plans were put on
hold till the rights expired. Now apparently, Amazon his plans for it but
without Alicia Vikander which is a shame. She makes a great tawny serious
Croft. Somehow or another she has skipped by my attention but this Swedish
actress has been in a lot of films going back to 2002 and starred recently
in the TV series Irma Vep which I now plan on watching. Though it seems to
be based on the Maggie Cheung film and not on the old serial Les Vampires
which would have been cooler.
Lara is a bicycle delivery messenger in
NYC. Her father is Richard Croft (Dominic West) an explorer and enormously
wealthy entrepreneur. She refuses to use his wealth. He had an obsession
about an ancient Japanese witch demon named Himiko who has been buried in
an unknown location for hundreds of years. The legend is that if she is freed
from the tomb, terror will fall upon the earth. He wants to make sure that
doesn't happen and has gone looking for it. And has been gone and assumed
dead for seven years. Himiko was a real historical figure. The Queen of Yamatai-Koku
around 200 A.D. and today in film and books she is often portrayed as an
evil sorceress. But not always. In some she is a wise leader. It turns out
that Richard has not been the only one looking for the tomb - so has a giant
criminal organization called Trinity - which is what this film was building
up to. The sequel would have been about Lara battling Trinity which is everywhere.
So she gives up her delivery job breaking
no doubt the heart of the Indian boy who wanted to ask her out and goes off
to Hong Kong to look for her father. He rented a boat that she has a picture
of and she finds it after being chased by three thugs. She asks the current
owner - the son of the old owner - if he would take her to this island. Are
you crazy, he replies. That is sure death. When do we go. He is played by
Daniel Wu who is American of Chinese ancestry who went to Hong Kong and in
nano seconds became a star in 1998. The two of them go off to find the island
and find trouble, Trinity and Himiko. It is one set piece after another and
good fun. Tons of CGI in these scenes but well-done.
