The use of space in the bunjee-jumping-inside fight scene is masterful - all three dimensions are used in a clever way. But I only worked this out afterwards. It was the choreographer's work that was masterful; the idiots who filmed and edited it did their darndest to make it choppy, incoherent, and unexciting. As if that weren't enough, someone - it may have been the composer, it may have been the director - thought that the action scenes would be best accompanied by a tuneless, relentless, jackhammer techno beat.
"Tomb Raider" is "Raiders of the Lost Ark" emulated by people who haven't seen it. If they HAD seen it, they'd know that Spielberg edited his action sequences so as to let the audience know what was going on, to give us an idea of where the hero stood and what obstacles he faced; also that John Williams wrote actual MUSIC, complete with themes and chords and rhythms and consecutive bars that often as not differed from one another.
I'm not familiar with the computer game - if I were, I would be doubly grateful to see Angelina Jolie in the leading role. It must get tiring looking at large computer-generated breasts that just SIT there, like cast-iron balloons. Oddly, the audience I was with tittered because Jolie's breasts bounced as she walked downstairs. I don't get the joke. That's what breasts, by and large, DO - those of Hollywood actresses being an unfortunate exception to the general rule. -Anyway, all this aside, Jolie was, as always, terrific, when the film allowed her to be. This wasn't often. Usually I can at least decipher the storyline of a film afterwards, but this one has me baffled. It SEEMS that the film's heroine, in order to Save the World, merely had to sit still and do nothing - and KNOWING this, she Endangered the World, so that she could later save it in a more rope-swinging, kick-boxing, ammo-expending fashion. But surely nobody would spend millions of dollars on a film with this central weakness ... would they?
