It’s very Indiana Jones, this
Tomb Raider reboot. In fact, it’s very reminiscent of 1989’s
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade—except they forgot the verve, or any Indy sparkle. This is a movie about old maps and secret tombs and puzzle boxes and exotic travel, and there isn’t even a hint of J. Peterman about it. When Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) stumbles upon the “secret calling” of her long-missing millionaire father (Dominic West), she follows in his footsteps to find the hidden tomb of an ancient Japanese sorceress-queen. It’s all fairly perfunctory, as if, well, she were a videogame avatar moving around the scenery because that’s what the plot requires. There’s no personality in her adventure, as there is none in her, either; she’s solemn, earnest and ultimately empty. There’s lots of action, mostly of the fisticuffs and gunfights varieties, and it’s nice to see a female character with a physicality we don’t typically get to see in women onscreen, without Vikander being shot in any way that is fetishized. But those are no replacements for the missing movie magic.
By
MaryAnn Johanson