Tomb Raider

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Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider: This tomb was better left unopened

All preliminary glimpses of this movie promised a contemporary Indiana Jones-ish female figure, equipped with an array of weapons, vehicles and finances with which to foray into exotic temples and tombs that would look more in place in a Nintendo Mario Brothers game than a big screen. Unfortunately, the previews turned out to be better than the actual movie (as is the case with many of these action films dependent on the lead's sex appeal or image-projection while placing story secondary-see Mission: Impossible 2). Angelina Jolie looks great in black boots and tight-fitting t-shirt, but curves, however attractive, can only carry a movie so long. She reminds me less of the video game Laura Croft (whose ponytail and skinny frame don't exactly send shivers down the voyeur's spine) and more of Kathleen Turner in certain scenes in Romancing the Stone. She's smart, well-educated (she can recall a line of William Blake automatically) and athletic, but her so-called expert maneuvering throughout the tombs and fight scenes looks more manufactured than natural. The main problem with this movie is that it looks too much like a movie; the "tombs" look too much like sets, and the characters remind us a bit too much of actual video game characters instead of honest, well-constructed personalities. Where we would normally look for action sequences to justify cruddy acting, here we are sorely disappointed.

Jolie is a "tomb raider," a quasi-euphemism for archaeologist, who is bored with the traditional duties she has been working for all the years past. Egypt has nothing but "pyramids and sand," and other possibilities of research and discovery just don't seem to thrill her. She gets a chance at further excitement when she discovers a clock underneath the stairs of her stately mansion with an odd orange glow in the middle. Upon further examination, the clock contains an ancient time-keeping device counting down to the final alignment of the solar system's nine planets (oddly enough, the impossibility of this adds to the surrealism of the movie, rather than destroying any credibility we might have). Croft immediately investigates, spurred on by a message from her father, sent years before his death and explaining the urgency of collecting two pieces of an ancient device that will allow the bearer to assume control of time.

Here, the movie loses most of its ground. Jolie is pitted against a group of middle-aged men calling themselves "Children of the Light," who try to use her to meet their own needs while making sure she doesn't get ahead of them and steal their much-coveted prize. The action sequences are heavy-handed, with cumbersome fighting and slow, seemingly harmless obstacles such as concrete spear-wielding monkeys and swinging pillars that look more like amusement park rides than deadly weapons of an ancient civilization. We think back to the blow-darts and rolling boulders of Raiders of the Lost Ark and we sigh in discontent.

Even more irritating is the romance and family angle thrown in. The romantic entanglement between Jolie and Alex West seems more like an afterthought; Jolie's home life of battling practice robots looks even less exciting than dealing with her facetious butler (who apparently does gun-fighting in his off-hours) and the predictably-eccentric technology wiz. John Voight gives a cardboard-faced performance as the MIA father who has shaped so much of Laura Croft's character. His presence throughout the movie serves more usefully as a reason to use the old "I-was-a-friend-of-your-father's" that Lucas made famous in his Star Wars films than as an actual personality that we like and want to see avenged. It's as if the writers decided character development was a good idea, but only after they'd been through all the action scenes and were ready to call it a day.

Overall, not too good. The story is a stretch, the effects are unexciting, and the movie's overall approach towards intriguing the viewer is clumsy and heavy-handed. Jolie's physical presence is not to be understated - she can carry the heroine role to extremes through many subtleties previously unexplored. But if that's all the movie has to offer, one would be better off staring at her cardboard cutout for the Taco Bell advertisements. At least that's free.

-Long