Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life

Paul Greenwood reviews

Lara Croft Tomb Raider:
The Cradle of Life

• Cert:
• Running time: 130 minutes
• Year: 2003
• Released: 22nd August 2003
• Widescreen Ratio: 2.35:1
• Rating: 6/10

Director:

Jan de Bont

(The Haunting, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Speed, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Twister)

Cast:

Lara Croft: Angelina Jolie
Terry Sheridan: Gerard Butler
Jonathan Reiss: Ciarán Hinds
Hillary: Chris Barrie
Bryce: Noah Taylor
Kosa: Djimon Hounsou
Sean: Til Schweiger
Chen Lo: Simon Yam
Xien Terence Yin

Cast your minds back to the wretched summer movie season of 2001,a heady time of such gems as Pearl Harbour,The Mummy ReturnsandPlanet of the Apes.As abomination followed abomination, one release rose proudly to the top of the dung heap to proclaim itself the smelliest of all – Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Now, as we near the end of this summer of sequels, we come to the least necessary, least anticipated yet – Tomb Raider: Lara Croft 2: Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life: The Sequel: Part 2 (to give it its full snappy title).

I just don’t know where I stand on this film. Yes it’s better than the first one, but much in the same way that having the ebola virus is better than being dead. It’s a mass of contradictions, with just as much to enjoy as there is to scorn. It’s better than we had any right to expect, but nowhere near as good as it should be. There are several moments that are truly, truly horrible, along with a couple of scenes that are worth the price of admission.

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Angelina Jolie – wet and ready for action.

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This is the sort of film where someone can punch a shark on the nose then hitch a ride on its fin; it’s the sort of film where you can fly from Hong Kong to London to Africa in an afternoon; it’s the sort of film where logic never gets in the way of a good chase and no effort is spared in ripping off Raiders of the Lost Ark, often and well. But it also provides some thumping fight scenes and a couple of glorious stunts, in particular the one with the flying squirrel parachute thingies that you saw in the trailer.

The island of Santorini: When wedding festivities are interrupted by a big fat Greek earthquake and half the cliffside falls into the sea, it’s the cue for various nefarious parties to scour the sea floor looking for Alexander the Great’s hidden temple (not that there’s even any attempt to explain quite how the first event leads to the latter). One of the parties is led by our heroine, the aristocratic adventurer, Lara Croft. Amongst various treasures inside the temple the one that catches Lara’s eye is a curious golden orb but, before she can make off with it, it’s snatched by some bad men who kill her companions and leave her for dead.

Back on dry land, Lady Croft and her shady Bondian accomplice, Sheridan (recruited because he can lead Lara to the Chinese gangsters who are in possession of the orb), must track it down before it gets into the hands of mad scientist Reiss. The orb you see holds the key to the location of Pandora’s Box (fans of Notting Hill will be smiling to themselves) and Reiss wants to use the Box to destroy most of mankind.

At least this time we have the benefit of a (mostly) coherent if rather silly plot but the flipside of this is that by the time we get to some inexplicable CG monsters eating everyone in a petrified forest, we know we’ve crossed the line from the idiotic to the truly preposterous. Jolie is sensational, both physically and performance wise but Butler is bland at best, and the role was crying out for Dougray Scott. Mercifully, there’s no over reliance on the type of spastic monkey editing that blights many action films (even some good ones) and, if nothing else, it’s a damn sight better looking than the deeply ugly original.

Review copyright © Paul Greenwood, 2003.E-mail Paul Greenwood

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