So I need a specific reason to re-post this DVD review of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, from 2001? What, like you have some objection to another picture of Angelina Jolie or something? Whatever...



In many ways director Simon West’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider represents both the peak and nadir of the DVD sell-thru boom. Its gloriously attractive packaging notwithstanding (it surely doesn’t hurt that the film stars Angelina Jolie), the film is a big hunk of depressingly dumb summer programming, and so the main question one feels hanging over any viewing of the movie or exploration of its more than three hours of painstakingly culled extras is: all this, in service of what?

Well, a film franchise, one certainly presumes. But Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is an inauspicious bow. This is not to suggest that Jolie, who flings her body about with grace, precision and a persuasive air of authority, is at all at fault. If some of the videogame’s more overt sexual elements are understandably sacrificed at the Canonized Altar of PG-13, Jolie still manages to convey a kick-ass sexual liberation merely with her leonine gait and the sly, timely displacement of one of her increasingly famous eyebrows (note to studios: investigate possibility of buddy cop flick with The Rock).

There’s also a charismatic, guileful intelligence to match those erotically hip-holstered hand cannons. If every other single character seems flat and boring, thanks to Jolie we at least get a good sense of well-off adventurer Lara Croft — of both her place within the film and why she’s such a popular videogame character. The film’s putative plot revolves around a clock and Lara retrieving two halves of a mysterious time travel device before the sneeringly evil Manfred Powell (Iain Glenn) and his Illuminati, a group of typically sinister-looking folks in typically sinister high-backed chairs, can wreak world domination.

Yet on any level of sane judgment, the film fails. The movie’s much-labored over script, on which six folks, including West himself, share some form of credit, features dialogue so inescapably bland and banal — actors sometimes just repeating other characters’ lines in the absence of anything else to say — that entire exchanges can evaporate, like butter melting between your ears, before you even know what the hell you’ve missed. Perhaps most damning for an action movie, though, Tomb Raider just isn’t very exciting. Apart from the frenetic opening sequence and an admittedly way-cool, bungee cord-type shoot out in which Jolie is suspended on what for all intents and purposes is a massive rubberband, Tomb Raider’s action is a dull pastiche of loosely related jumps ’n’ stunts, the equivalent of preordained action dominoes falling listlessly. We never for a moment feel peril — indeed, feel anything — and aside from the gorgeous settings (the dense jungle of Cambodia, the tundras and caves of Iceland), Tomb Raider offers nothing of quality for its charismatic lead to plunder or rescue.

Still, for those inclined, the Tomb Raider DVD does offer a lot of nice extras, including an audio commentary track by West, a look at Jolie’s intense training for the role, a production featurette, four deleted scenes (including one that sheds crucial light on Croft’s relationship with part-friend/part-nemesis Alex, and two more which achieve the dubious distinction of having even worse dialogue than the film), an alternate title sequence and the unedited version of U2’s “Elevation” video. The most compelling extra, however, comes in the form of a brief set interview with Jolie and her father Jon Voight. While this may be a questionable choice for their first screen teaming, it’s heartening to see the two reconciled and happy together... for the moment. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B+ (Disc)