“Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” is more “Mission Impossible” than it is “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
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Lara Croft is many a young teenager´s fantasy girl. This isn´t to say she isn´t the perfect fantasy girl for many post-teenage ´boys´ either, as I´m sure plenty of twenty-somethings that grew up playing the "Tomb Raider" video games still would love to have a girlfriend just like Lara. The video game series became popular not because of its gameplay or engaging story, but because of the character´s rather large polygons. The controls were lousy and the story was often quite dull. However, the British accent and curvaceous proportions of the character engraved Lara Croft into many a young boys idea of the perfect woman. So when it came time to bring "Tomb Raider" to celluloid, who could fill the brassiere of the gun-toting adventurer?
I´m not sure that much thought had to be given to cast Angelina Jolie as the tomb raiding Croft. Jolie is the object of affection for many movie-going males. She is a lovely lady who has an intelligent, but adventurous appeal. She is also a shapely young lady who doesn´t quite fit the dimensions of the video game vixen, but still looks mighty fine in a skimpy outfit. Out of the better known actresses in Hollywood, Angelina is easily the best choice as Lara Croft. To successfully make a film based on a game that was popular mainly because young male players enjoyed finding the best camera angle to ogle at the heroine requires an actress that is going to have the same success of capturing the male eye. Angelina is a great choice.
Joining Angelina Jolie in the film is her real-life father Jon Voight as her in-movie father, Lord Richard Croft and the latest incarnation of James Bond, Daniel Craig as fellow adventurer and an object of Lara´s affection, Alex West. Noah Taylor is Lara´s tech-geek friend Bryce and Iain Glen plays resident bad guy Manfred Powell. At the time this film was made, Voight and Jolie were the only ´names´ in the film. Daniel Craig had not made a name for himself and was mostly unknown to the masses. The cast turns out to be one of the better casts to take part in a ´video game movie´ and helps land some credibility to the story to allow it a chance to rise against the muck that is typical of video game adaptations.
The story of "Tomb Raider," however, does not rise above the stigmata that has plagued video game adaptations. Lara Croft must race against time to beat the Illuminati in finding the Triangle of Light and controlling time to do devious things. The opening sequence where Lara is in a fight to the death with a training robot is just a start to the ´over-the-top´ moments that plague this film. Lara Croft is a larger than life character and you would certainly need a film that was larger than life for the character to populate, but "Tomb Raider" approaches hilarity with more regularity than it does adventure. Instead of tombs with puzzles, Lara must dodge a constant barrage of gunfire. Additionally, the film resorts to a high level of technology to aid Lara, where the character typically must get by with a pistol and a flash light, you find Lara heavily aided by Bryce and modern technology to solve the ´puzzles´ that confront her. In the end, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" is more "Mission Impossible" than it is "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Perhaps my familiarity with the series is reason for me to not enjoy the film. I think "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" would have been better served as a smaller budget film that didn´t have all of the grandness of this picture. A little less bullets, a little more moss would have done the film well. The film doesn´t hit a tomb until nearly forty-five minutes into the picture. Lara is airdropped to a tomb in Cambodia (the airdrop is another example of how over-the-top everything has to be in this picture) and finds the bad guys already there. Manfred Powell has employed tomb raider Alex West to help uncover pieces of the triangle. The film runs for only 100 minutes and it takes us halfway through the film before we even get to see an adventurous location. What are we rewarded with? Some nice visuals. Lara stops to smell a flower and falls into a hole and we finally are rewarded with a set we would have expected to see in a film titled "Tomb Raider." Then we get stone monkeys for Lara to combat and within a dozen minutes, the best set and scene in the film is over.
The subplot of Lara´s sadness for her dead father was something else I felt that could have been done differently. Her father disappeared when she was a child, but a decade or two later, her father suddenly haunts her life when the Triangle of Light becomes her latest adventure. The film heavily looks at themes of ´Time´ and ´Loss.´ For Lara Croft to still be continually haunted by her father for a decade or two would have Lara Croft being a depressed and lonely individual. This certainly goes against the adventurous spirit of Lara Croft.
Video:
"Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" was the first film of Paramount´s initial slate on HD-DVD that I watched. The 2.351 anamorphic transfer is mastered in 1080p. When compared to "Sahara," the second Paramount title I watched, "Tomb Raider" is a bit of a disappointment. The level of depth in the film varies scene-to-scene. Some of the scenes are as stunning as Miss Jolie, while others are soft and a bit grainy. The film finishes on a grand note and the entire final sequence exhibits high levels of detail. The film contains a lot of bright colors and they are nicely saturated and quite pretty. The film has a few dark moments and black levels and shadow details hold up well.
The sets used in the film are all quite grand. Buddhist temples, grand mansions, Venice, Cambodia and other exotic locations are all brought to life. However, the often hazy picture does not do the film as much justice as HD-DVD is capable of. Haze is actually a good word as some of the backgrounds are lost in a haze. Whether this is a problem with the methods of lighting used in the film or the film stock used, "Tomb Raider" is far from being a stunning title on HD-DVD. It is far from being the worst transfer I´ve seen and there are certainly moments where the title exhibits a stunningly high-detailed image, but it is just wildly inconsistent.
Sound:
Other than "U2: Rattle and Hum," all of Paramount´s initial slate has the following soundtracks: "English 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus," "English 5.1 DTS, "French Dolby Digital 5.1 Plus" and "Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus." This is a nice complement of formats. In "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," The Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack is the better sounding of the native-language tracks. It has a fuller and more dynamic sound to it. The DTS mix does contain a harder hitting amount of bass, where the .1 LFE channel is more controlled and a bit subdued on the Dolby Digital Plus mix. The soundtrack for "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" is quite aggressive. Considering the high amount of gunfire, it is almost a given. There are some nice atmospheric sound effects, but the soundtrack´s musical score by Graeme Revell hits hard and drowns out the ambient effects. A bell wrung in the film´s finale and the following explosion of ice wonderfully shows off the films higher range and prepares the viewer for the final scene in the room with the planetary tomb machine, where the soundtrack really shines.
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[release]18832[/release]