Film Review: Tomb Raider (2018)

A survivor is born . . . just not here

Tomb Raider (12A)

Starring: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu

Director: Roar Uthaug

The Plot: Following the disappearance of her father Richard (West) several years previously, Lara Croft (Vikander) has shunned her inheritance and lives a reckless life in London as a cycle courier. Learning that the family estate may be lost, Lara reluctantly agrees to sign legal papers confirming her fathers death, and in doing so receives a clue that leads to his research into his last fateful expedition - the lost Japanese island of Yamatai, believed to be the resting place of Himiko, a queen who possessed great destructive power. Lara sets off to Yamatai to discover what happened to her father, and there she faces a gruelling ordeal - and most the stop the deadly organisation Trinity, who have sent an armed force to the island and are determined to claim Himiko's power for themselves.

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: It's been fifteen years since Lara last graced the cinema screen, in 2003's terrible Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (for which star Angelina Jolie famously criticised the distributors for airbrushing her nipples out of the film poster) and a lot has changed since then, particularly in the Tomb Raider video game series. You probably won't be surprised to learn that I'm a big fan of the series and of Lara herself - I've been playing the games since way back in 1996, when the original was first released and I installed it onto our family's home PC that barely managed to run it in its lowest, pixellated graphical settings. The series had been gradually declining in quality until a few years ago, when the game upon which this new film is loosely based arrived.

In 2013, Lara and her story were rebooted in the imaginatively-titled Tomb Raider. In the game, Lara was spun back to nineteen years of age, her comically-large breasts were reduced, and we follow her on her very first expedition to the lost island of Yamatai, a place her (very much dead) father had never been able to find. Shipwrecked on the island and hunted by a dangerous cult who live there and worship the queen Himiko, Lara is broken down both physically and mentally and must build herself back up to survive. The story, which was written by Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of the late great Sir Terry), was widely praised by both critics and players for the positive depiction of this new version of Lara, particularly in how it shows the mental and physical impact on an inexperienced young woman who literally has to kill to survive, and how over the course of the game Lara gradually progresses until at the end we see the first spark of the fearless adventurer we know she's destined to become. It's a brilliant game and a brilliant story, and it's therefore a real shame that the makers of this film have chosen to ignore the vast majority of it.

Now, that's not to say there's nothing recognisable from the game here. And, I feel it's important to say that for all the criticisms I have, I understand why changes were made - film is a different medium, after all, and not everything that works in a video game will work for a film the makers are hoping will appeal to a mass audience. So, Lara still travels to Yamatai, she still gets shipwrecked, she still has to fight for her life, and she still gets the shit beaten out of her by the environment and her opponents. But they've really missed the point here. With the exception of a short sequence where Lara escapes from the Trinity soldiers, is wounded and then forced to kill one, the whole aspect of survival, of Lara being forced to rely on nothing but her own instincts to overcome the odds, is completely removed. Even the moment when Lara kills a Trinity soldier with her bare hands, which admittedly is very well shot here, has seemingly little effect on her, compared to the huge emotional impact it has on her in the game. The tag line for the video game was "A survivor is born", and the trailer for the film (which featured a remixed version of the song "Survivor") made it seem like this would play a large role in the story, but alas, this isn't the case.

Instead, the film focuses more on Lara's relationship with her father Richard who, spoiler alert, turns out to be very much alive and stranded on the island himself, having remained there to work against the Trinity soldiers. This actually works fairly well thematically: Lara is initially resentful towards him, still hurt by the man who left her as a teenager and never returned, despite promises to do so, and her gradual acceptance and forgiveness play a role in the outcome of the story. But, it's her father who saves her and heals her, something Lara is forced to do herself in the game, and this again is a change that from the original story that negatively impacts the character.

It's not the only change that has been made either. The villain of the piece is Matthias, played by the great Walton Goggins and very much hampered by the script. Here he's a rather generic villain, the leader of the Trinity forces who have come to the island in search of Himiko's supposed power. In the game, Matthias is the crazed leader of a cult that worships Himiko, having been shipwrecked on the island himself many years earlier and slowly driven mad. It's a real shame that this isn't the character we get to see in the film, which would have been a far more effective use of Goggins' talent. Himiko herself was, in the game, a supernatural entity with the power to summon huge storms and who transferred from body to body via ritual sacrifice. Here her "power" is revealed to be that she was the carrier of a deadly virus, having been sealed away to prevent its release into the world.

Another notable change made for the film is that, in the game, there was a distinct lack of actual tomb raiding. While Lara can explore several small optional "tombs" that consist of one or two rooms, the developers intentionally avoided having Lara explore large, complex tomb structures (as she did in all the previous games) in order to focus on the survival story. The writers and creators of this film, however, obviously decided that audiences wouldn't accept a film called Tomb Raider unless it featured just that, so instead the third act of the film is devoted to Lara, Richard and Matthias exploring Himiko's tomb, a grand underground structure filled with deadly traps that wouldn't look out of place in an Indiana Jones film. It works well within the theme of the film and allows for some good set-pieces, but again it kind of misses the point that Lara isn't supposed to be ready for all of this yet.

Alica Vikander is, fortunately for the film, terrific here as Lara. She's an incredibly talented actress (an Oscar winner, let's not forget), and she not only looks the part - complete with ponytail and trademark grey vest - but really throws herself into both the dramatic and physical aspect of the role too. This version of Lara is, as I've already mentioned, a bit different from the one in the game. She's a bit older (in her mid-twenties here, as apposed to late teens) and already a bit of a badass, proficient with a bow due to archery lessons as a child and seemingly proficient in hand-to-hand fighting and grappling, despite the opening scene in a boxing ring showing her having her arse kicked. For all my criticism of the story that's been presented here, Vikander does well with what she's been given and has a few key dramatic scenes with her father that show there's more to the character than the hard exterior.

The action sequences are actually pretty decent, shot well and are fairly exciting given the film's 12A rating. The sequence where Lara initially escapes and traverses a rusted old fighter plane that overhangs a waterfall (partially lifted from the game) is particularly good, as are the trap sequences inside the tomb of Himiko, but ironically the best sequence is actually a cycle chase that Lara has on the streets of London during the first act. Given the direction chosen to take the story, it was essential that these aspects of the film, along with Vikander's physical performance, were up to scratch. They are, and while they're not mind-blowing in any way, they're exciting enough to keep your interest.

So is it a good film? Well, yes. That's the thing though - it's just good, but if it had been a faithful adaptation of the video game's story, it could have been truly great. I would have loved to have seen Vikander play out the tense, emotional journey that Lara undergoes in the game (where she's voiced and motion-captured by Camilla Luddington in a terrific performance) but sadly it wasn't to be, and instead the filmmakers decided to go for a version of Lara that, while distinctively more modern, is already the arse-kicking woman that audiences are familiar with. A tease at the end of the film where Lara picks up her trademark dual pistols for the first time indicates there could be future films, which wouldn't be a bad thing, but it's just a real shame that the filmmakers have missed the point here.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A decent action-adventure film that sees a good performance from Alicia Vikander as the iconic Lara Croft. Unfortunately it shuns the most effective and praised part of the video game that it's based upon, so rather than an emotional tale of a young woman overcoming overwhelming odds to survive, we get a more audience-friendly story of an already strong Lara and the relationship with her father. It's worth your time, but it could have been so much more.