Can we just all agree that video games don't make good movies? Hollywood keeps trying, but the source material inevitably loses something once the audience is forced to put down the controller and be expected to sit and watch. Case in point: "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," the second (and we can only hope, final) film featuring Angelina Jolie as the world's most famous pixelated babe.
Jolie's appeal in the eyes of the world remains a mystery to me--probably because I could care less how she fills out a wetsuit. In her hands, Lara is basically a less interesting version of Indiana Jones, traipsing across the globe in search of treasures because...well, because they're there, I guess. In the opening scenes she's in an underwater temple, ogling a glowing bocce ball which is promptly stolen by Asian mercenaries. The ball, we learn, is the key to finding the legendary Pandora's Box, and the mercenaries are in the employ of a bioterrorist (Ciaran Hinds, trying to imitate Alan Rickman) who wants to open the box and unleash the plague within, sparing only the "best and brightest" (from his dialogue, I gather he defines this as anyone with power and/or money). Lara sets off to stop him, dragging along (for reasons I won't bother to explain) an ex-con named Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler, trying to imitate Russel Crowe and/or Hugh Jackman). Lara and Terry apparently have a history, a plot point which I might believe if the actors displayed any chemistry on screen.
But let's leave off the hole-riddled plot, pedestrian acting, and logical loopholes for the moment. After all, nobody comes into a film like this expecting "Amelie." "Cradle of Life" commits the one sin which is unforgivable in an adventure movie: nothing that happens on screen is in any way fun or exciting. This is one of those movies where action sequences occur not because they have anything (however slight) to do with the characters or story, but because someone thought they looked cool. Fights are photographed in a very uninvolving manner, with blurry bodies, countless shots of glass shattering and scenery getting destroyed, and excessive amounts of slow-motion. The result is something that looks like a cross between a travelogue and the X-Games, only harder to watch.
"Some things are meant to stay lost," Lara muses towards the long-awaited ending, by which point it's very clear that this movie is one of them.
Jolie's appeal in the eyes of the world remains a mystery to me--probably because I could care less how she fills out a wetsuit. In her hands, Lara is basically a less interesting version of Indiana Jones, traipsing across the globe in search of treasures because...well, because they're there, I guess. In the opening scenes she's in an underwater temple, ogling a glowing bocce ball which is promptly stolen by Asian mercenaries. The ball, we learn, is the key to finding the legendary Pandora's Box, and the mercenaries are in the employ of a bioterrorist (Ciaran Hinds, trying to imitate Alan Rickman) who wants to open the box and unleash the plague within, sparing only the "best and brightest" (from his dialogue, I gather he defines this as anyone with power and/or money). Lara sets off to stop him, dragging along (for reasons I won't bother to explain) an ex-con named Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler, trying to imitate Russel Crowe and/or Hugh Jackman). Lara and Terry apparently have a history, a plot point which I might believe if the actors displayed any chemistry on screen.
But let's leave off the hole-riddled plot, pedestrian acting, and logical loopholes for the moment. After all, nobody comes into a film like this expecting "Amelie." "Cradle of Life" commits the one sin which is unforgivable in an adventure movie: nothing that happens on screen is in any way fun or exciting. This is one of those movies where action sequences occur not because they have anything (however slight) to do with the characters or story, but because someone thought they looked cool. Fights are photographed in a very uninvolving manner, with blurry bodies, countless shots of glass shattering and scenery getting destroyed, and excessive amounts of slow-motion. The result is something that looks like a cross between a travelogue and the X-Games, only harder to watch.
"Some things are meant to stay lost," Lara muses towards the long-awaited ending, by which point it's very clear that this movie is one of them.