Tomb Raider

*ing: Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristin Scott Thomas

Rated: 5.5/10

From Angelina Jolie in the first one to Alicia Vikander in the 2018 edition, the Tomb Raiders have not moved too many paces, certainly not at all from their original calling. Granted that the franchise allows them to follow only a rigidly set path which has to lead to some tomb raiding in some remote part of the world, mostly to save the world from unmitigated evil (this time an infection genocide), but sometimes variety does help, especially when it is not the kickass Angelina Jolie taking the battle to 70 mm bigness.

Yes, Vikander brings her own brand of athleticism to the proceedings and yes it is quite a becoming thought that a movie with a female lead has stood its own for 17 years, but Vikander does not have that splashy oeuvre of Jolie that can carry a movie on the shoulder of a female lead with style and class.

Vikander, a rich father’s girl who lost her daddy to an unknown, unexplained, unfound expedition into the deeps of Japan, is an uninterested heiress of billions as signing the papers would mean she accepts that her missing daddy of seven years is dead. And that leads this Lara Croft into a water/island/spirit expedition into a sinister part of the land of cherry blossom from where she returns “not that kind of Croft”.

The film is interesting, mildly so because you almost known what you are hurtling into and how scathed or unscathed you will emerge with Lara from this expedition. The slight niggle is that the adventure this time is not as grand, as unexpected and as sinister as you would have liked Lara to return successful from.

 Also, Vikander has some acting inertia what with emotionalism not being her forte even though there are certain scenes in which the father-daughter interaction needed her to be vulnerable and intense, much beyond the muscular, athletic mould she befits.

Overall, it is a viewable raid, especially this week.

Source: The Pioneer, 11 March, 2018