Game On: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Dir Simon West, 1h40m, 2001)

 
The Tomb Raider franchise turned 30 this January; the series has long since become an icon of British gaming, and the medium as a whole, whilst its heroine, Lara Croft has been at turns pin-up, action heroine, trailblazer for more female player characters, especially in the macho world of action adventure gaming, and, particularly since 2013's reboot, an unexpected feminist icon. Like many of the heroes we've discussed in this season so far, Lara's adventures extend beyond the small screen, with comics, TV series, including an upcoming return to live action starring Sophie Turner, and two animated series, theme park attractions, breakfast cereal, action figures, and, of course, the movie, the most recent of which, coasting off the back of 2013's reboot starred Alicia Vikander, itself acting as a reboot of today's subject, Angelina Jolie's first outing as the action heroine, in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

When compared to the two films in the season thus far, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is certainly a breath of fresh air: Simon West, after all, had directed enjoyable Nic Cage on a Plane scenery buffet Con Air in 1997, whilst the story was written by Mike Werb & Michael Colleary, just off 1997's Face/Off (also starring Nicolas Cage!) There is also the very nature of narrative in a game like Tomb Raider, compared to the tournament of Street Fighter and the princess-rescuing platforming of Super Mario Bros, Lara's adventures by their very nature are cinematic, heavily riffing off Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and John Woo's Hard Boiled in its globe-trotting archaeologist and stylish gunplay combination. Lara's translation to the big screen is thus decidedly less cumbersome, and a far more enjoyable experience; Tomb Raider also manages to feel like the game it's adapting without slavishly copying one of the games beat for beat. 

This is not to mention, alongside Jolie's take on Lara, semi-convincing English accent et al, the film otherwise hinges on a cross-section of British rep, including Daniel Craig's old flame and Alex, Iain Glenn (later of Game of Thrones fame) as a rival party after the film's central MacGuffin, and, most distractingly, Chris Barrie, alias Rimmer from cult sitcom Red Dwarf, as Lara's butler, Hillary. Taking the first game's quest for a mysterious multi-part artefact - though frankly all of the early Tomb Raider games focus on quests for items, either broken into pieces or sets of -and marrying it to the mysterious disappearance of Lara's father, so the film wastes no time getting into its central conceit. But first, action.

What Tomb Raider does certainly get down pat is the series' heavy focus on action, in particular Lara's iconic dual pistol wielding firefights against everything from animated statues to, memorably a T. Rex. The latter doesn't feature here, but the opening sequence, in part thanks to cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr, otherwise responsible for such fare as Die Hard with a Vengeance, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and 2016's god(s)awful Gods of Egypt does basically set up Lara's no-nonsense action heroine shtick by re-creating the opening training mission of Tomb Raider I. The action, and the admittedly impressive setpieces, best of which is a commando raid that plays nicely with the geography of the house - of the three films we've discussed so far, this feels the closest to the standard summer blockbuster fare, and it's the better for it - are great fun to watch, and it's where Jolie is most quintessentially Croftian. 

This is a fairly solid action movie albeit stymied in places by a peculiar propensity for frame rate drop during dramatic moments that feels like a less-impressively executed version of Zack Snyder's variable frame-rate malarkey. The globe-trotting, whilst it is restricted to Cambodia, Venice and Siberia, gives the film a pleasant paciness, and keeps it from being visually stale, albeit a cinematic tourism that feels as superfluous as the earlier Bond films. In fact, when it's being an action movie, Tomb Raider has little to dislike: its central cast, especially Iain Glenn's moustache twirling Powell, are enjoyable company, including Lara's team of techie Bryce (Noah Taylor) and butler, Hillary, whose presence in the more expository sequences keep the film from becoming too bogged down in narrative self-importance. 

I say this because whilst Tomb Raider's action chops are perfectly adequate - and occasionally pretty good, its narrative is preposterous in the trashy but best-selling latter Dan Brown novel sort of way, complete with janky but charming CGI planetary alignments, millennia-long conspiracies and, inevitably, the Illuminati. The latter do not figure at all in the games, and the plot's convolutions seem to tie themselves in knots every so often - the film's central MacGuffin, the multi-part Triangle of Light's powers among them. These convolutions are made even more complex by the repeated changing of sides - perhaps because Tomb Raider is trying oh so very hard to remind us Lara is an anti-hero - such that it becomes needlessly complex to remember who's working with (and indeed, for) who. 

Even the emotional centre of the film, involving Jon Voight's Lord Croft, Lara's father, feels remarkably perfunctory, a chance for real life father and daughter to do some Serious Acting, whilst Daniel Craig, accent in tow, wanders around the movie as a vaguely Indiana Jones-esque love interest to give Jolie someone to badinage off against. All of this is decidedly cheesy at best, and a slog at best, and against the film's otherwise impressive pace, it only makes things more disjointed, the film wheel-spinning through laughably silly dialogue or occasionally - somehow worse - teenage titillation, neither of which feels very much like Tomb Raider, either in spirit, or indeed like its game incarnation. Like the latter half of the pre-reboot Lara Croft games, it gets itself caught up in so much lore it forgets to embrace its sense of fun.

For Tomb Raider is fun, capturing what makes the games work when it isn't leaning into bad summer blockbuster exposition, and, in a first for this season, it is an enjoyable watch. Whilst not quite living up to the globe trotting adventures of its titular heroine, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is perhaps a first for the medium's early years, a competently made, and enjoyably pacey adaption of the action game franchise.

Rating: Recommended

 Next week, Paul (W.S.) Anderson and Milla Jovovich welcome us to the mansion for 2002's Resident Evil