Posted: 07/27/2003

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life

(2003)

by Hank Yuloff

Proving once again that video games do not good motion pictures make…

It could have been the 10:15 PM screening. Or the fact that it was warm in the theater. Or that I was thirsty and the concession stand was closed. Or that the stadium style seats were not even as comfortable as something at Anaheim Stadium. Or…. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is just not as good as the first Lara Croft flick and I was disappointed.

Angelina Jolie (Girl Interrupted, Life or Something Like It) is back as Lady Lara Croft, an Indiana Jones kind of adventurer who has the security clearance of James Bond 007 (Now that would make a good crossover). The story opens after an earthquake in Greece uncovers the previously hidden Lunar Temple and some pretty spectacular antiquities are now available to be reclaimed. Croft is on it immediately. Also in the temple is something she didn’t know existed: the map to Pandora’s Box - a source of intense evil that, it seems the evil billionaire Jonathan Reiss (Cieran Hinds from Road to Perdition) knows DOES exist.

A change in the water currents allows Croft to the site before the bad guys who appear to have been following her to the temple. How odd that there was an open space of air in the temple as large as your school auditorium that has lasted for centuries. All right, I’ll go with these stretches - but I’m starting to feel the warmth in the theater. A bright shiny object 40 feet above her head gets her attention and up she climbs - quick as a cat - to investigate. That’s when the bad guys show up and begin to fire underwater spears at her. Just like in the first flick, Croft seems impervious to a hale of bullets or any other deadly projective sent her way. No one can hit her.

They capture the bright shiny object and leave Croft to die in the temple beneath the sea But she escapes and with the help of a passing shark - yes, this movie jumped the shark rather early - she gets back to the surface of the ocean before she running out of breath. Later she is saved by a passing British submarine (I’m not making this stuff up) and lives to die another day.

The rest of the movie is a race to the hidden Cradle of Life where the box (I could listen to Jolie say that word every day) awaits the forces of good and evil. Guess who wins? Yawn.

Most of the acting is pretty dreary. Gerard Butler (Reign of Fire, Wes Craven’s Dracula) is forgettable as Croft’s former bad boy lover and all of the bad guys are completely one-dimensional… flat and uselessly boring. About the only thing that was really interesting were the scenic shots of Hong Kong and Africa. Even the fight sequences are not good enough to be comic book funny.

The intelligence and resources that all of these parties seem to have at their fingertips astounds me. They knew instantly that the Temple was uncovered. They knew what was in it. They know where to find the bad guys in China. They are able to get from England to Russia to China to Africa in a few hours. They never seem to sleep. There are more holes to fill than in a fine Swiss Cheese. Croft even gets cut a few times and seems to heal in a matter of hours.

Unfortunately Jolie’s beauty is not enough to carry this film. It’ll do well because of her name but I can’t begin to recommend it. And to think I tried to drag one of my buddies to the AMC theater.

Hank Yuloff is the biggest Jolie fan on staff and most likely wrote this review while staring at the seven-foot poster from the first Lara Croft film, which hangs on his wall… We imagine he is pretty close to inconsolable.

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