Tomb Raider

As hard as it may be to admit, the orig­i­nal Tomb Raider movies are not very good. Though many of us have a soft spot for these relics of pre-Nolan, pre-Mar­vel Hol­ly­wood action cin­e­ma, revis­it­ing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and its tor­tur­ous­ly titled sequel Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cra­dle of Life today reveals just how far the genre has come in recent years.

Con­sis­tent­ly ogling Angeli­na Jolie in the title role, these films attempt­ed to work around their intense­ly objec­ti­fy­ing gaze by plac­ing them­selves firm­ly in the realm of the unre­al­is­tic action epic. Bor­row­ing lib­er­al­ly from Michael Bay, John Woo and ​’90s music videos for their tongue-in-cheek aes­thet­ic, they almost suc­ceed­ed: if Jolie’s Croft looked amaz­ing through­out, it was because of her aston­ish­ing phys­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties as much as her amaz­ing figure.

But Lara’s inhu­man strength and sex­i­ness, com­bined with pre­dictable sto­ry­lines and an increas­ing­ly irri­tat­ing snarky tone, made the whole explo­sive enter­prise feel rather flat.

Since Jolie’s last adven­ture, the Tomb Raider video game series has gone through a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion. Reboot­ed with the mod­est­ly titled ​‘Tomb Raider’ in 2013, a supe­ri­or sequel soon fol­lowed with ​‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’. A greater con­cern for real­ism in these games drew a lot of crit­i­cism from hard­core fans of the orig­i­nal games, nos­tal­gic for Lara’s pyra­midic breasts and impos­si­ble shorts. But this atten­tion to real­i­ty is pre­cise­ly what saved the series – and what makes this new adap­ta­tion work so well.

In Tomb Raider, helmed by Nor­we­gian direc­tor Roar Uthaug, Lara is still the daugh­ter of a man obsessed with relics and ancient tombs, but she’s also an ordi­nary young woman like you and me… Well, not quite. Almost all the men she engages with in the film’s ear­ly Lon­don-set sequences are in love with her – and who wouldn’t be? She is kind and beau­ti­ful, knows her Shake­speare, has Vikander’s glow­ing com­plex­ion, and has a taste for extreme sports. We are first intro­duced to her in a box­ing ring, being utter­ly whooped by anoth­er woman. She suf­fers, but only taps out at the very last sec­ond. Like in the recent video games, she isn’t invin­ci­ble. And like in those games, it’s for this rea­son that we care.

While avoid­ing the mind-numb­ing sen­so­ry and stu­pid­i­ty over­load that the Jolie movies embraced, this reboot still main­tains a healthy dose of unre­al­ism and cheese. The film opens with a deli­cious­ly corny, old-school sequence of cross­fades between maps, pho­tographs and ancient arte­facts. In voiceover, Dominic West (play­ing Lara’s father) recites the ancient tale of Himiko, a Japan­ese ​“moth­er of death” who once brought destruc­tion upon every­thing she touched, and is now buried some­where deep on a desert­ed island in the Devil’s Sea.

Reas­sured from the out­set that there will be tomb raid­ing at some point in the film allows us to relax and enjoy the show before the real action tru­ly begins. Fol­low­ing Lara, we soon learn that she works as a bicy­cle couri­er and wit­ness her reck­less par­tic­i­pa­tion in a thrilling ille­gal bike race through East Lon­don, tak­ing huge risks in the hope of mak­ing a lit­tle extra mon­ey. As in the orig­i­nal game and films, her father was rich. But he has been miss­ing for sev­en years, and Lara isn’t touch­ing any of her inher­i­tance because she refus­es to accept his death.

When it looks as though she is final­ly ready to sur­ren­der and sign the papers on the rec­om­men­da­tion of her guardian (Kristin Scott Thomas in sub­lime form), Lara is led by one of her father’s clues to a hid­den room under the fam­i­ly bur­ial plot. As it turns out, he was much more than a savvy busi­ness­man. In a video left for Lara, her father explains that after her moth­er died, he looked every­where for proof of the super­nat­ur­al. He tells the sto­ry of Himiko and how she might hold the key to res­ur­rec­tion – but Lara flinch­es, think­ing he has gone mad.

Aside from the refresh­ing man­ner in which the film is ground­ed in real­i­ty, the mere fact that Lara has big­ger prob­lems than how to get from A to B is thrilling. We invest in her sto­ry not because she sets off on a badass quest for some mys­ti­cal object, but because she is pro­pelled by a des­per­ate need to find out what hap­pened to her father. The film doesn’t go full Dark Knight how­ev­er – it isn’t about the nature of good and evil, the sacred­ness of the father-daugh­ter bond, or any fun­da­men­tal issues. Above all it is about Lara becom­ing a tomb raider, and learn­ing all the skills – and heartaches – that come with the job.

In Hong Kong, look­ing for the man who helped her father get to the island, she meets the sex­i­est, most objec­ti­fied per­son in the film, Lu Ren, played by Daniel Wu. Even when lying down in pain lat­er in the film, Lara her­self is nev­er objec­ti­fied, and the male-female dynam­ic typ­i­cal­ly found in action movies is flipped. A ter­rif­ic mon­tage of their boat trip shows our hero­ine focused firm­ly on her mis­sion, work­ing out the coor­di­nates and star­ing into the dis­tance, while Lu looks at her in admi­ra­tion, in awe of her courage and deter­mi­na­tion. That she doesn’t notice him is great; that he leaves her alone after that is noth­ing short of inspir­ing. Note to all block­buster film­mak­ers: respect­ing women is extreme­ly hot.

Clear­ly thought through with great care and atten­tion to detail, all of the film’s action sequences man­age to com­bine dis­creet homages to the recent video games with the demands of nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma. With­out spoil­ing too much, an ear­ly sequence sees Lara sud­den­ly grab on to a metal­lic chain hang­ing from high above her to escape from her assailants – a sig­na­ture move beau­ti­ful­ly intro­duced as a lit­tle sur­prise right in the mid­dle of an already superbly chore­o­graphed sequence.

Lara’s arrival on the island marks her first encounter with death and vio­lence. Far from desert­ed, the loca­tion is con­trolled by the evil Math­ias Vogel (a suit­ably ter­ri­fy­ing Wal­ton Gog­gins), who is using ship­wrecked fish­er­men as slaves to dig out the same tomb searched by Laura’s father. He claims to have killed Mr Croft, but like us, Lau­ra doesn’t ful­ly realise the extent of this man’s cru­el­ty and the hor­ror of death until she wit­ness­es him mer­ci­less­ly exe­cut­ing an old enslaved man.

This gen­uine­ly shock­ing moment leaves Lara trau­ma­tised and silent. But Lu – always look­ing out for her – knows that she’s got to act, and so they fight back. Lat­er in the film, Lara is forced to kill a guard in self defence. After the act is done, she looks at his face and cries. This sen­si­tiv­i­ty and real­ism ele­vates the stakes of the film to such an extent that, com­bined with its play­ful­ness and inven­tive­ness, we can already safe­ly call Tomb Raider one of the year’s best action films.