Movie Review: Alicia Vikander Is Your New, Relatable Lara Croft in the Bland "Tomb Raider"

Sorry, we’re still waiting for the first great video game adaptation. Tomb Raider (2.0) ain’t it.

Meet Lara Croft, the girl-next-door who’s trying to make ends meet as a courier in modern London.

That’s how Alicia Vikander’s take on the iconic video game adventurer is introduced in Tomb Raider: cheerfully cycling through the streets to pop music, as if she were a millennial, more muscular Bridget Jones; though, not before she shows off her MMA skills in a gritty, grungy gym. To emphasise how relatable she is, she loses the fight, tapping out from a chokehold. Tomb Raiders: they’re just like us!

Improbably-named director Roar Uthaug is behind this latest adaptation, coming 15 years after Angelina Jolie last took on Lara Croft’s infamous tank top and braided hairdo.

It’s hard not to root for a big budget action flick with Vikander at its centre. After toiling in countless tedious period pictures, it’s about time she got that money had some fun. And she certainly brings some much-needed goofiness to the role. But none of this looks like fun. Whether it’s in the boxing ring, or later, running across the jungle, jumping from obstacle to obstacle, and getting knocked unconscious or hurled from ledges, Vikander is asked to scream and cry and writhe in agony.

(Tomb Raider may hold a new record for 'most face-stubbings from the butt of a gun', which is apparently Uthaug’s preferred method of knocking Lara and others out.)

And though the game itself was designed as a gender-swapped Indiana Jones pastiche, this reboot—written by the exceptionally fancy-sounding Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons—feels like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, with a third act lifted directly from The Last Crusade. Honestly, as my eyes struggled to remain open through the blandly familiar and narratively inert first two thirds, I welcomed the climactic homage, knowing we were at least now at the final stretch, and Vikander would soon be free to recuperate from her wounds.

For those unfamiliar with Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider games, she’s an English heiress with a penchant for, you know, raidin’ tombs. In this version, she has abandoned her aristocratic inheritance, knowing she’ll have to formally declare her long-missing father—antiquities hunter Richard Croft (Dominic West)—dead to claim it. She learns, from a secret office hidden in her family mausoleum, that Richard’s last mission took him to a lost Japanese island, where the supposedly supernatural Queen Himiko was once buried, and whose exhumation would lead to global genocide. So, Lara leaves behind her not-so-promising career in food delivery, recruits a hard-drinking ship captain named Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) and sets a course for adventure, while profiteering archaeologist Vogel (Walton Goggins) works to recover Himiko’s body.

If you’re keeping count, that’s exactly two tombs raided in 118 minutes. Lara couldn’t have squeezed in a quick visit to Highgate Cemetery?

It bears repeating that Vikander, an exceptional actress I’ve previously described as "spiky" and "sparkling" in otherwise forgettable films, is winning and witty when given the chance here. She’s also victim to the ultimate curse of Lara Croft; as any players of the game already know, she’s largely left on her lonesome, left to overcome the elements or enemies or confounding puzzles in isolation. Vikander, as proven in Ex-Machina, can be plenty compelling and enigmatic when alone. Yet this feels like a waste. If Lara Croft makes a joke in the woods, and no-one’s around to hear it, does she make a sound?

As with all wrong-headed video game movies, the audience is regularly reminded that what’s fun is playing, not watching. If anything, these kinds of features should aim for immersion. However, Hollywood has struggled to either turn these things into real-life rollercoasters or convert their pixelated characters—even ones as established and beloved as Lara Croft—into flesh and blood human beings for us to care about, as we would in any well-crafted film. (Wonder Woman, which Tomb Raider no doubt wishes it was emulating, gave its fictional heroine detailed motives, complex emotion and actual agency.) And in many scenes, Vikander seems pixelated as well, thanks to some unforgivably bad CGI and exaggerated jumps. The way Uthaug frames it, Lara Croft can straight-up fly.

There’s a bright side: If I had to choose between Vikander’s Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed—that calamitous, baffling video game revival from her partner, Michael Fassbender—I’d go for her unremarkable Tomb Raider. I’d rather some shut-eye than a stress headache.

2.5/5

In Australian cinemas now. Rated M for action violence and sense of peril.

Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures