Lara Croft has made the transfer from computer generated heart throb in the tomb raider games series to a star on the big screen in the form of Angelina Jolie in the smash film of the same name – ‘Tomb Raider’.
The film starts with a bang, seeing our heroine Lara face to face with a monster robot in an ancient ruin fighting for her life, guns blazing and some very nice moves. However it is all a mock, mere practice and relaxation for Lara Croft, but it fooled me into thinking it was real.
The real plot is Lara Croft is the daughter of the famous explorer Lord Croft, (Jon Voight) who was tragically lost or missing from one of his trips. Lara, (Angelina Jolie) has inherited her fathers’ sense of action and adventure herself, and finds her biggest challenge yet as she is out to protect the world from evil as the planets align something very, very bad could happen. On the anniversary of her father being lost Lara discovers a secret room in her mansion that her father kept all his records and manuscripts, as well as a strange clock. She takes it to an old friend, an antiques dealer, who in turn puts her in contact with another person, Manfred Powell who
knows full well what it is, so much so he takes it in his mind to forcible take the clock from Miss Croft.
Anyway the clock contains a part that fits in an ancient temple that will release The Triangle of Light. This little beauty gives the holder the power to control and go back in time. Lara still wants to find out what happened to her father, that nasty Mr. Powell has been putting ideas into her head that he was not all he made out to be, just a few problems.
1. Powell and Croft have one piece each of the Triangle 2. The place where the pieces has to be united is in Siberia and is a dead zone, ie no machines.
Not to let that bother them, Lara bursts in on the bad guys in South East Asia to get one half of the triangle, and continues her jet setting to race Manfred Powell to the place to keep him from getting his hands on the awesome power of the artifact. Tense stuff.
It says on the back cover as one of the claims from the critics, ‘Jolie is Lara Croft, not playing her’, all I can say is it does exactly as it says on the tin. Jolie is fantastic, good looking as was one of the main parts to the success of the video game, and really good on the stunt, a real action woman. There is a very interesting feature on the DVD showing an almost military training regime to get her to the physic of Lara Croft on screen. Lara Croft is the main character, though there are plenty of others. She is supposed to be very English, big county house, rich and having a butler who tells her how a ‘lady’ should behave, the gadget and computer bloke, who I have no idea what sort of a relation he was. Manfred Powell is the bad guy, you do believe he is bad but gets his comeuppance. He has a dithering henchman who is a bit of a weed, and another bad guy who is a greedy money orientated person, but is not all bad and has known Lara quite well.
There are plenty of action scenes, that is what really makes the movie for me. For example for relaxation what does Lara Croft do when she is not beating up people? Ballet with a twist, in that she is jumping off a bungee cord in the middle of the grand hall. Or when she parachutes into Asia with the help of a few friends with a jeep, going huskie sledge barefoot and running around ruins which have a habit of collapsing. There are lots of these, Jolie does a lot of the stunts herself, again there is a DVD feature to detail these and show how they were done. Very good.
As a DVD film, all the spectacular actions shots were even better, as they should have been. On the features side of things, there is both quality and quantity. There are plenty of cast and director interviews, as well as a full length commentary. There is a look at the whole Lara Croft phenomenon with the game as well, the DVD-ROM has the game demo for the chronicles. There is a feature on the training Angelina Jolie got for preparation for the role, deleted scenes, and a look at some of the special effects in making this film. U2 did the music behind the film, their video for the single off this ‘Elevation’ is on the DVD, and if you use this special edition DVD on your PC then there is a large selection of websites, timeline and so on, all the menus are done with a lot of graphics and interaction. It looks good, but takes a long time. This can be irritating at times, of you know what you want to do it takes a long time to reach the one you want.
I was not a big admirer of the computer game; I did not play on any of the games when they were first released and have not got into them since. I know the basis idea, a pretty fine lady action hero flying off the all corners of the world fighting things and exploring, but I am not in a huge position to compare between the game and the film. I can imagine that some people could be critical, these sorts of things are very hard to do if there is another format already made. I have no complaints whatsoever, Jolie plays Croft all the way that I imagine she should have been, there was plenty of action, and the Americans did not damage it too much.
Overall this was a nice movie, lots of action and a very nice lady doing the stunts, what more could I ask for? Some of the action scenes were very good, brought out well by the DVD, which also had a lot of very interesting features. A slightly patchy storyline, not that that matters much, a very good action film.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 2004 - Action/Adventure - Director: Jon Turteltaub - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Justin Bartha, Sean Bean, Jon Voight, Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger
Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
Production Year: 1964 - Action/Adventure - Director: Cyril Endfield - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring:Stanley Baker, Jack Hawkins, Ulla Jacobsson, James Booth, Michael Caine, Nigel Green
Angelina Jolie is the first and best reason to watchLara Croft Tomb Raider. She gives an ... more
extraordinarily committed, physically demanding performance, taking on the mantle of the video game heroine with real conviction and energy, and becoming the embod...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Angelina Jolie is the first and best reason to watchLara Croft Tomb Raider. She gives an ... more
extraordinarily committed, physically demanding performance, taking on the mantle of the video game heroine with real conviction and energy, and becoming the embod...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Lara Croft, the world's most famous video-game heroine, bursts onto the big screen in .. ... more
the most stylish and entertaining action-adventure movie in years!Exploring lost empires, finding priceless treasures, punishing villains in mortal combat.. it's a...
Advantages: Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie. Oh, and some excellent action sequencies Disadvantages: No underwater swimming scenes, like in the game
Advantages: Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie. Oh, and some excellent action sequencies Disadvantages: No underwater swimming scenes, like in the game
![Lara Croft Tomb Raider -- Special Collector's Edition [DVD] [2001]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78528045.jpg "Lara Croft Tomb Raider -- Special Collector's Edition [DVD] [2001]")
Jan 7th, 2002
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