Hello fellow Ciao reviewers in the community! I'm back today with another film review on Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

I shall of course start in the usual fashion when doing one of my film reviews with a couple of quotes from some critics:

"After a while, you stop speculating how Croft will wriggle out of each fine mess and start checking your watch."
Gene Seymour, NEWSDAY

"When we're not offered dime-store CGI or cardboard Temple Settings, we're attacked by action sequences that waver between "stutter-step silly" and "slo-mo stupid"."
Scott Weinberg, EFILMCRITIC.COM

Again this is another movie which doesn't get much praise from it's critics. On the whole...I would have to agree I'm afraid.

***TECHIE STUFF***

This fim has a 12 certificate. There is one scene with some mild sexual content, but other than that it's mostly violence that parents need to look out for.

I bought my DVD copy from HMV at £19.99. I have checked on Amazon and the price they give is £15.99. As I understand it, this film comes in a collectors edition with the first film included! Good for Lara Croft fans! This film also comes in VHS.

Released by Paramount Pictures....(Not a bad effort I suppose guys!)

A running time of 1 hour and 57 minutes....(how many bullets can you fire in that time Lara?)

***DVD SPECIAL FEATURES***

As I have the DVD I'll give you a list of the features on it.

Commentary By Director Jan De Bont
Deleted Scenes
Alternate Scenes
Featurettes
Gerard Butlers Screen Test
The Davey Brothers Heart Go Faster Music Video
Original Theatrical Web Site Archive
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
The DVD is in English although it is also dubbed in Czech.
The subtitles come in the following languages:
Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish and English for hearing impaired.

***ACTORS AND ACTRESSES***

Angelina Jolie
Gerard Butler
Ciarán Hinds
Chris Barrie
Noah Taylor
Simon Yam

***CHARACTERS***

Lara Croft
Played by actress Angelina Jolie. The hero. Lara Croft is adventurer and archaeologist extrodinaire. Lara doesn't let her guard down and always seems to find a reason to point a gun at someone. Lara will always get her own back and is not someone to be messed with or taken lightly. Lara has friends all over the place helping her out on her mission and is highly skilled fighter and highly trained gun expert. Lara will have a joke sometimes and does have a sense of humour all her own.

Terry Sheridan
Played by actor Gerard Butler. The ex-lover and traitor to his country. Sheridan was sent to the Kazakhstan prison because he abandoned his mean and betrayed his country. Busted out of prison, you get the feeling that Terry hasn't exactly turned over a new leaf. Still pining for Lara, it doesn't look like his badboy image has changed that much.

Hilary
Played by actor Chris Barrie. The butler. This guy is a little more gung-ho than the next character. Not afraid to get out a rifle and shoot an intruder, Hilary is far more saracastic than he's any right to be. Not your average butler, but he gets the job done and is very loyal to Lara.

Bryce
Played by actor Noah Taylor. The techno-wizard. Bryce is an expert on computers and is a highly intelligent bloke. He loves to play on computer games, especially ones that involve helicopters!! A bit on the dorky side but Bryce can survive any situation to help Lara. Bryce can be somewhat sarcastic towards and does have a sense of humour towards Lara, but Lara always wins!

Jonathan Reiss
Played by actor Ciarán Hinds. The villian. Reiss is the leading designer of biological weapons in the world. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants and to get ultimate power. Devious and cunning you can't expect to not get shot or killed by this guy when you meet him.

Chen Lo
Played by actor Simon Yam. Chen Lo is the leader of a chinese gang of bandits called the Shay Ling. Chen Lo has had some dealings with Terry Sheridan before. Chen Lo sells whatever he can get his hands on but is no fool. If he thinks something is worth more than someone is letting it on, he's not about to let it go without a hefty price tag attached to it.

***PLOT***

The film begins with a wedding in Greece. When an earthquake rumbles the buildings foundations you cut to 3 ships. All of these ships are raiders who are looing for something. In comes in Lara and when she is asked by her friend Gus what everybody thinks is down there she tells him it's the Lunar Temple built by Alexander the Great and that the earthquake has revealed it's location. The other boats are going in the wrong direction but Lara and her infinite wisdom and a little help from her laptop, knows the location of the ruins.

Lara and two friends go diving and find the Lunar Temple. It's one of the most prestigious finds in history and Lara is looking for something rather important. It's a glowing orb and just as Lara is trying to get it, the men from the other boats show up and kill Lara's friends. Dropping the orb and barely escaping with her life, Lara get's picked up by Hilary and Bryce.

A few days later at her mansion, she gets a visit from MI6. The men who killed her two friends, also killed her other friend Gus and sank his boat. Lara learns that the man is called Chen Lo and that he is part of a chinese gang of bandits called the Shay Ling. Chen Lo has the orb and is going to give to a man called Jonathan Reiss

Jonathan Reiss is the world's leading designer of biological weapons. He develops strains of deadly viruses and diseases and then sells them to the highest bidder. Not interested in killing anyone, Reiss is desperate to get his hands on the orb.

To explain why and what the orb and Pandora's Box is all about, I've included a chunck of dialogue for you to get the picture.

LARA: "Reiss is going to use the orb to find Pandora's Box.

MI6 AGENT 1: " Do you mean the Greek myth? Pandora is given a box by God, told not to open it, she does and unleashes pain into the world?"

LARA: "That's the sunday school version yes. How do you think life began? Shooting star? Primordial ooze? In 2300 BC, an egyptian pharaoh found a place which he named: "The Cradle of Life", where we....life...began....and there he found a box, the box which brought life to Earth. The Pharaoh opened the box, but all the was left inside was the Ramante or anti-life, the plague which came as the companion to life.

MI6 AGENT 1: "Companion?"

LARA: Nature is all about balance, all the world comes in pairs, Yin and Yang, right and wrong, men and women, what's pleasure without pain?"

MI6 AGENT 2: "What did this plague do?"

LARA: "It levelled the Pharaoh's army. The Pharaoh's son dispatched his finest soldier to take the box and transport it to the end of the world. 2000 years later Alexander the Great, reached India, where his army was ravaged by a plague, after one of his men found a box amongst some remains."

MI6 AGENT 1: "India? That's where the Pharaoh's man brought it?"

LARA: "Yes. Alexander feared that the box was much too powerful to be trusted to any man, so he returned it to it's home in The Cradle of Life....and it has never been seen since."

MI6 AGENT 2: "And this Cradle of Life is where?"

LARA: "No-one knows. Alexander found using a map which came with the box, a map which he then hid from the world, but the name he gave this map was "Mati"...and the literal translation for the word "Mati" is "eye". The orb is the map....hidden in the Lunar Temple...by Alexander, and Reiss will use it to find Pandora's Box and when he does, when he opens it...he will unleash a weapon more powerful than anything you could imagine."

But this time, Lara needs a helping hand. She needs to find the Shay Ling and Chen Lo and the only person who can get her close to them is Terry Sheridan.

Lara and Terry must now get the orb back from Reiss and find the box before he can get his hands on it and open it. If Reiss gets hold of it millions of people could die.

Will the Pandora's Box be once more opened or can Lara find a way to keep it out of harms way for good? If you want to know, then you'll have to go out and buy the film!!

***QUOTES***

LARA: "I expected more from a scott!"
TERRY: "I don't expect anything from an english woman!"
LARA: "Good, because you're not going to get anything."

HILARY: "Ahhh...What is the happy couple up to?"
LARA: "Accessorising......."

HILARY: "Nice day for a dip?"

***MY PERSONAL OPINION***

Angelina Jolie has reprised her role as Lara Croft once again and she has done a reasonable job of it. At times in the film you can tell that Jolie must have had some difficulty with doing her british accent as it doesn't seem to sound natural in places.
Lara Croft is obviously a gun-ho kinda girl, but the problem is that she always has a gun in her hand and a rather stony expression on her face most of the time. As such, it hasn't given Jolie much scope to explore her character. Saying that, I can't see anybody else playing Lara Croft and most of the lads I know just drool over her, with jaws dropping like cash registers!
Terry Sheridan is one of those guys who just doesn't look trustworthy. Prision didn't seem to suit him and Gerard portrays him well in this film. Hilary and Bryce are portrayed much in the same way as the last Lara Croft movie and as such haven't really grown as characters.
My moan isn't so much with the story line although it was a bit predictable that all would end well and the world would be saved. Another predictable element in this film is the fact that no matter what situation Lara gets herself into, she always gets out of it. Let's face it there is gun action pretty much from the start and it would be a pretty c*** film if Lara was killed off in the first 10 minutes!
Another complaint is about the acting. Although Jolie makes a great Lara Croft, watching this film made me think if she should have done this in the first place. It seems that Jolie could have done something more valuable with her time. In a way, if you do the lead character for the first film then perhaps Jolie felt obligated to do the sequel. The other characters, including Lara haven't had much room to grow and as such I think the actors performances have suffered.
What keeps me interested in a film is when the writers keep the storyline going, with turns and twists. Cradle of Life has guns going off every 2 minutes and although this is an action film, you can't just have guns firing all the time otherwise as Gene Seymour says, you'll start to check your watch! Some of the stunts admittedly were good but the directors are going to have to do better to keep me interested!

The decision of course is yours

Happy trails kids!

Leila :)