Tomb Raider (2018)

I never cared much about Lara Croft. I never played the video game and I never even bothered with Angelina Jolie's movies. I do like Alicia Vikander though (and I'm tremendously jealous of her for marrying Fassbender) so I decided to check out this new Tomb Raider movie. Having read some brief reviews, I was expecting it to be bad but I wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it turned out to be. 

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is a fierce and independent young woman whose father (Dominic West), an eccentric adventurer, vanished when she was barely a teen. When forced to handle her father's global empire, she decides to leave everything she knows behind in search of her father's last-known destination, a mythical island somewhere off the coast of Japan. Needless to say, her mission won't be an easy one.

And needless to say, the plot is tremendously weak, unappealing and boring. It is filled with holes as big as moon craters, a pretty much useless father and daughter subplot, and basically, all that happens before Lara reaches the island is completely useless. There's also an intriguing twist at the end, but it falls flat completely.

The main character is just as dreadful and uninteresting. Lara Croft comes out only as a rich and spoiled child who is looking for daddy. She doesn't learn anything, she doesn't grow. Basically, nothing happens to her. It feels like the writers didn't care at all about the character, as if trying to make Lara Croft interesting was too hard, required too much effort. In a scene, she has pretty intense eye contact with another woman --they are basically eye-fucking. Sure, there's a gay twist everywhere nowadays but it could have made the character more interesting. Instead, they drop it and we never see that woman again. 

Warner Bros. Pictures

Vikander's performance is in line with the rest of the film. While her physical transformation is truly impressive as she gains a lot of muscle to fit the role, her performance is flat and wooden. She doesn't convey a single emotion. All she does is shout and groan, but she's terrible at those too. Frankly, I can't believe some "men" complained about her boobs being too small instead of complaining of all the above mentioned. 

The supporting characters too are one-dimensional, their motivations aren't really explained and make no sense whatsoever, which, of course, results in dreadful performances from the rest of the cast. Nick Frost makes a brief slightly funny appearance though. 

Tomb Raider doesn't work that well as a dumb action/adventure flick either. The action sequences aren't that exciting, the CGI is average --it is nice in the darker scenes but doesn't look very good in daylight--, and the sound isn't particularly good either --the volume was too loud in some scenes. The purpose was to add drama but it didn't happen.