~ ~ Ever since the very first Tomb Raider game came out for the PC back in the early 1990’s, Lara Croft has been a firm favourite in the ‘mad cabbie’ household.
Of course, they were ostensibly bought for the wee lass, (my now twelve-year-old daughter) but in truth, her old dad probably got as much pleasure out of them as she did.
So it was hardly surprising that when the first Tomb Raider movie, starring Angelina Jolie, came out in 2001 that it was immediately purchased on video, (I didn’t have a DVD player back then) and avidly devoured by both myself and the wee lass. Since then, it has been a firm favourite when she has her friends over for sleepovers, and has been the source of much pleasure and entertainment.

~ ~ Are you beginning to get the general impression that I like Tomb Raider?
Have I managed to adequately convey the huge amount of pleasure this fictional character has given to my young daughter over the years?
And she is not alone!! Countless thousands of youngsters (and some not so young) have enjoyed the exploits of Lara, and no doubt will continue to do so in the future, helped by the recent release of the very first Lara Croft game for the PlayStation console.

~ ~ OK. Enough of the sarcasm already. I suppose I better tell you a wee bit about the movie.
In truth, the plot is almost a straight “lift” from the Bond movies or from Indiana Jones. It’s the usual villain who wants to take over/destroy the world, with Ms. Jolie replaying her part as Lara, who naturally enough wants to stop him.
In this particular film the villain is a former Nobel Prize winning scientist called Jonathan Reiss, (beautifully played by Ciaran Hinds) who is now a “modern day Dr. Joseph Mengele”. He has a lucrative little part time earner manufacturing and selling biological weapons, and has heard of a mythical archaeological artefact called Pandora’s Box, which supposedly contains the ultimate biological weapon. (an ancient Biblical plague)
He’s keen to get his dirty hands on this treasure, but of course our heroine Lara can’t allow this to happen, and pulls out all the stops to thwart his ambitions.
Along the way she enlists the assistance of an old boyfriend, mercenary soldier Terry Sheridan, (played by Scot’s actor Gerald Butler) after cutting a deal with British Intelligence (MI6) for his release from prison.
There’s a map (in the form of a glowing orb from the time of Alexander the Great) that supposedly reveals the location of the deadly Pandora’s Box. Lara initially manages to locate in an old underwater temple in Greece, only to have it nicked from her by a rival Chinese treasure hunter called Chen Lo. (Simon Yam)
Naturally enough, our heroine is somewhat keen to retrieve it, before it falls into the hands of the despicable Dr. Reiss.

~ ~ The stunts are amazing. We have Lara punching a killer shark on the nose and hitching a ride on its back to the surface when she is caught out deep underwater without an oxygen supply. (A wee bit far fetched, but spectacular and great fun none the less)
We have her stunt riding a motorcycle along the Great Wall of China, and sky diving of a skyscraper in Hong Kong. (It’s a bit like Grace Jones’ dive from the Eiffel Tower in the Bond movie “A View To Kill”).
She pole vaults onto a helicopter to set a homing device, and parachutes from a plane into a moving jeep.
Then there is a furious set to with the Triads, set among the famous Chinese Terra Cotta Warriors. (Quite a few lose their heads!)