Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life

This second movie in the 'Tomb Raider' series was a disapointment for me. I was not a great fan of the first one either. Certainly Angelina Jolie is as sexy as you can get, but there is too little else in her character to make her the female James Bond that the authors of the series want her to be. Even the sentimental track in this second movie does not succeed to make her more real. Director Jan de Bont succeeded much better with the original story in 'Speed' or the reality-TV like effects in 'Twister'. In 'Tomb Raider 2' he is just mixing a potion of James Bond with a little bit of Indiana Jones, without too much of a result. If you did not see it yet, you may as well wait for the DVD. 6/10 on my personal scale.

Craptacular is the one and only word to describe this piece of trash movie. I never knew I could hate a film so much, until I saw Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.

After the medicore, but entertaining first Lara Croft movie, comes this just-plain-crap and boring sequel. Half the time during this movie, I found myself staring away from the screen, wondering about other things - it was just totally uninteresting.

A plot you ask? Well, a plot is very non-existant here, save for a recycled story from the first movie. Lara Croft must find the much desired Pandora's Box, along the way teaming up with her old friend, Terry (an incredibly bland Gerard Butler). Sound familiar? It should - we've seen it before.

Bad action scenes, trashy dialogue and enormous plot holes make up 117 minutes of this movie. Was it really that long? It seemed like a lifetime.

Not even the usually fantastic Angelina Jolie can save this film. Avoid at great risk - (* out of ****).

This movie was all right, kept me entertained for the most part, but it needed more and less. The story is a bit better this time in parts, but it is also worse in others. I was kind of hoping I would hate this movie as most critics and people seem to, but I enjoyed it so now I suppose I will get private messages from people saying I should hate the movie. Well don't bother writing me please. The movie starts out with a cool underwater temple scene, and this is the highlight of the movie. It is also the only part in the movie that feels like the tomb raider video game. The rest of the movie has some good stuff, but it doesn't feel like tomb raider, more like a spy movie or something. At one point there is a scene with monsters that look like they belong in the Lord of the Ring movies. For what it was worth it was ok, but these monsters were kind of out of place. At least the stone warriors from the first movie have actually appeared in the game. I would also love to see Lara go into an actual tomb for once. Sure the underwater temple was cool, but it was just one room. Like the first one all the tombs here are usually one room. Can't they have here go through a really long tomb with multiple traps and stuff for her to shoot at? Also, I wish she would have used her guns more. I shoot more in five minutes of the video game than she does in this entire movie, and she always loses her weapons too. Not that I don't want to see character development and stuff, but this is a movie based on a game, it should be a bit more action packed than what we get. All in all though it was okay, I enjoyed it, but it just wasn't as good as the first for me.

Let's face it, the James Bond franchise has become rather limp lately. "The World Is Not Enough" was a debacle of miscasting and an an endless parade of meaningless subplots and tertiary characters. "Die Another Day" suffered from much of the same, but was also saddled with an inexplicable amount of stereo feedback and one of the oddest (if catchiest) theme songs in recent memory. The series has been re-energized with the new entry "The Cradle Of Life," a high-spirited, far-reaching film that doesn't quite succeed but is such an improvement on the originals that you're ready to overlook all that.

Actually, this is a review of "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life", the sequel to 2001's abysmally dull video-game-based film "Tomb Raider." Angelina Jolie is back as sexy, gun-toting archeologist Lara Croft, and at first glance, it's easy to mistake her for Bond, Jane Bond. Lara is a British citizen of refined taste, highly competent in various forms of weaponry, travels around the globe to exotic locations, has friends (and lovers) in virtually every port, uses a wide variety of nifty gadgets, has an amusing yet dry form of wit, looks fabulous, and routinely saves the world from a madman bent on global domination. She's a better 007 than Timothy Dalton in any case.

The film begins with Lara diving into a sunken temple off the coast of Greece. While there, she is attacked by Chinese mercenaries, her support crew killed and left for dead, the mercenaries making off with a mysterious glowing orb. Seems that mad scientist Jonathan Reiss (Ciaran Hinds) is looking for Pandora's Box, and the orb is the key to finding it. Lara is appointed by MI:6 with stopping Reiss because opening the box would unleash an amazingly nasty plague upon the world. Besides her support staff of Hillary (Chris Barrie) and computer expert Bryce (Noah Taylor), Lara joins forces with ex-lover Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler), a shifty mercenary and the only person who knows how to get to the mercenaries who stole the orb in the first place. And of course, time is running out.

Jolie is excellent as Lara Croft, and there probably isn't an actress around who would be better cast in the role. Jolie has the physicality, the look, the voice, and the attitude to pull off the role effortlessly. She was the only redeeming factor in the first film, and she's great to watch here. The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Hinds refrains from chewing up too much of the scenery, but he brings to mind some of the more notable Bond villains of recent times. Butler is great to look at, but his performance is far too low-key and deadpan for a movie as bombastic as this one wants to be, especially when he's paired with Jolie, who enters each seen with a relishing look in her eyes. Taylor again acts as a dry kind of comic relief, and he displays far more chemistry with Jolie than Butler does.

One of the biggest improvements in this film is the director. Replacing Simon West (responsible for the monotonous "Con Air") is Jan de Bont ("Speed"), a much more competent director even if some of his films are only barley entertaining ("The Haunting"). de Bont has a knack for action on a small scale, most vividly in a gun-fight staged in a laboratory/office, but his large scale pieces, like Lara body-gliding off of one of Hong Kong's tallest buildings, lack drama. Still, de Bont has chosen good locations and sets for the film, and there is a blessedly welcome lack of the "Matrix"-style visuals and candy-colored bombast so popular in action films of recent memory. He is nothing if not up to task. The film operates well within its own set of rules and physics, unlike many other films that tend to sacrifice internal logic for cheap stunts.

As much of an improvement on the first film as this is, there are still flaws. The script, while improving ten-fold on the original, still falls flat on several occasions, sometimes held up only by Jolie's confident line readings. At almost two hours, the film displays a desperate need for tighter scenes and a quicker pace while simultaneously leaving some scenes cut too quickly. The movie can be very easily divided into stages, which may hold true to the spirit of the video game's levels, but often leaves the audience doing nothing more than predicting when the DVD chapter cuts will occur in six months. Also, like the James Bond films, there is rarely any doubt that Lara will escape any dire situation she finds herself in. Like 007, we always know the hero will prevail in the end, which robs some scenes of the tension needed to excite the audience.

Despite some of these flaws, "The Cradle Of Life" is a fine movie and a good way to spend 2 hours on a summer afternoon. Jolie obviously enjoys the role, and if nothing else, the film is worth it for that alone. Here's hoping the third entry into the series is even better than the this one. 7 out of 10.

When an earthquake in Santorini, Greece uncovers the lost Luna Temple of Alexander the Great, wealthy globetrotting treasure hunter Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) jumps at the chance to unearth the secrets of this lost temple and uncovers a strange glowing orb. However when Lara and her associates are ambushed by the Chinese crime syndicate, Shay Ling, the orb is lost with Lara now only possessing partial images of the orb. Lara is later contacted by MI6 who inform her the orb is of interest to biological research magnate Dr. Jonathan Reiss (Ciarán Hinds) who on the surface is a respected doctor whose efforts in medical research have earned him the Nobel Prize, but beneath that façade is the leading creator of biological weapons who sells his weapons to anyone for the right price. MI6 says Reiss is trying to find Pandora's Box in the elusive Cradle of Life, where humanity is said to have originated from, with intent to use the Box as a weapon. Lara agrees to pursue the orb and Reiss and requests Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler), a former soldier turned mercenary who possesses knowledge of the Shay Ling and is an old flame of Lara's. Now Lara and Terry must travel the globe from Mainland China, to Hong Kong, to Africa to prevent devastation to humanity.

Following the smash success of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001, development began on a sequel with the film financed as an international co-production through tax credits and presales similar to how the first film was done in a manner that profits were generated before the movie hit theaters. The movie underwhelmed in its debut opening in 4th place behind holdovers Pirates of the Caribbean and Bad Boys II in 2nd and 3rd place respectively, while the top spot was seized by Robert Rodriguez' Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. While the film petered out stateside with a final tally of about $65 million, well short of the $130 million produced by its predecessor, international numbers did bring its final tally to $160 million worldwide which while not great was still profitable thanks to the offsetting of financial risk with presales and tax credits. Paramount blamed the underperformance on the failure of Eidos' then latest release in the game series with Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness garnering bad reviews and souring the brand (which would lead to a soft reboot with Tomb Raider: Legend). While Angel of Darkness' poor reception from fans and critics probably didn't help, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life feels like it's somewhat lacking in the energy and drive that was present in the previous film.

In many ways The Cradle of Life does improve on the previous entry with elements like Lara Croft's killer training robot or the dodgy CGI elements seen in the first film dialed back by a considerable degree. The opening action beat where Lara finds the Luna Temple is really good with some nice acrobatic work for Lara in initially obtaining the Orb that starts off the adventure in a nice visual reference to sequences seen in the games and once again Jolie is doing a nice job inhabiting the character. There's also a fun dynamic between Jolie's Lara and Gerard Butler's Terry with the two sporting a fun sexually charged dynamic and the two playing off against each other quite well. Terry feels like an expansion of what was only hinted at with Daniel Craig's Alex West character from the previous film and as a result is given much more presence and purpose in comparison. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the film's primary antagonist, Ciarán Hinds playing Johnathan Reiss who's just boring as a villain and wants to use Pandora's Box because "wouldn't the world be better with fewer people?". At least the last villain from the previous movie wanted world domination, here, our villain wants to destroy the world because "meh, what else am I gonna do?"

Another part that doesn't work as well is with the film's visual identity or creativity of its adventure sequences. While Jan de Bont has given us some entertaining films as a director and cinematographer with his work photographing Basic Instinct and Die Hard showing his eye for such material as well as his entertaining if silly directorial efforts on films like Speed and Twister, De Bont feels a little more restrained here with a lot of scenes not really matching the level of distinction we saw in the last film. The first movie was objectively speaking a sillier film, it also had a stronger sense of visual identity with two major Tomb Raiding sequences set in Cambodia and Siberia with the tombs both having unique designs as "puzzles" and action beats, as well as distinguished environments that were well established. The cradle of life on the other hand only has ONE major Tomb Raiding sequence at the beginning of the movie and for the rest of the film with its heavy emphasis on Chinese crime syndicates and corrupt pharmaceutical magnates doubling as biological weapons dealers, it hit me that the movie is going less for Indiana Jones and instead more for James Bond. The Cradle of Life is for the most part feels like it's more in line with a spy thriller than an adventure film, down to the fact Lara is working with MI6 as well as a former mercenary who's a love interest. The movie also has a predominantly orange color palette which just doesn't feel all that appealing and leaves the film lacking much visual identity. The movie does eventually return to adventure aspects with a third act set on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, but the sequence substitutes the orange color palette for a dark grey color palette and takes a promising idea of a room with no set direction of up and down and does virtually nothing with it leading to an underwhelming climax.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider-The Cradle of Life feels just so lifeless. While Jolie and Butler are engaging leads, the adventure they go on in the movie is lacking in adventure and feels more like a generic spy movie that occasionally puts in lip service to adventure. It's not a terrible movie as there are occasionally some standout action sequences or moments with the cast that do work, but there's really not much here that wasn't done with more fun and drive in the last movie.