Review: Is Tomb Raider The Best Video Game Movie Ever?

There has been an unfortunate curse when it comes to video game movies as most (if not all) of them have been pretty bad.

Well there's a new Tomb Raider movie on the block and it hopes to finally break this trend.

The new Tomb Raider movie is loosely based on the 2013 reboot video game and it follows a similar plot line.

Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is in search of her missing father (played by Dominic West) and hopes to find him on a mysterious island.

Lara's father was searching for Himiko who was an ancient mythical Japanese woman that had special powers. Her father's goal was to prevent an evil organization named Trinity from finding the secret to her powers. 

While the main plot kind of stays true to the 2013 video game, the film itself is sadly a mixed bag.

While Alicia Vikander shines as a persistent and feisty version of Lara Croft, the film lags thanks to a slow pace and a storyline that kind of jumps the shark near the end of it.

I feel the first 30 minutes could have been chopped down because it felt like I was not even watching a movie about Tomb Raider. At the start of the film, it tries to establish Lara Croft as a normal human like Peter Parker who has a job as a food courier.

It seems a bit out of character as we have never seen this side of Lara before in the video games.

That said, once Lara Croft gets to the island, the movie does pick up a bit. The island that the characters visit looks pretty awesome with all of its vegetation and bright sunny skies.

However, the night time scenes in this movie are dull and you cannot see much of the action in the dark with the lack of lighting and constant shaky cam...

The film also uses too much CGI in my opinion especially during the part where Lara and her friend Lu Ren (Daniel Wu) crash their ship on the island.

The film could have been much cooler to see if more real life action scenes and stunts were filmed.

What I do admire is that the movie is not too shy on action scenes despite the film dragging on a bit with lots of boring dialogue scenes.

Near the end of the film, we actually get to see Lara raid a tomb just like in the video games.

Despite some strong action sequences, the film's biggest weakness in my opinion is the main bad guy named Mathias Vogel (Waltin Goggins). To me, Goggins did not have strong screen presence and I would have preferred if someone more famous was cast in the role.

The character of Vogel didn't really do much of anything in the film and he wasn't really a huge threat to Lara Croft.

Probably the best character in the movie aside from Lara Croft herself is Lu Ren, although his scenes are quite limited once he gets separated from the main group.

Alicia Vikander is mostly great as Lara as she both looks and sounds like the video game version.

Overall though, Tomb Raider the movie is very average and suffers from an inconsistent tone and a cliche story. No matter how good Alicia Vikander is as Lara Croft, the rest of the film drags her down a lot.

I'm a huge fan of the Tomb Raider video games and Alicia Vikander herself, but sadly this movie could have been executed much better than this.

Verdict: 2.5/5 stars

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