In a platform overrun by male action protagonist, Lara Croft swooped in and became a video game icon. In order to counteract stereotypical female characters, British developer Core Design member Toby Gard created the character in 1996, in which she would be the main character in the action-adventure series Tomb Raider, which would last over several years, even receiving a reboot in 2013 with a brand new tone as well as a completely different Lara. With a character so iconic, it was only a matter of time before a film was made about her, but with female action movie not being taken as seriously by film-makers as male action movies, as well as video game movies being pretty abysmal overall, led to not many people having hope in this 2001 film. Famous explorer Lara Croft (played by Angelina Jolie) finds that she has lost any sense of fun in her casual adventures and that does not mesh well with her risk-taking lifestyle. Discovering that a planetary alignment will occur in a week’s time that could reveal a treasure left undiscovered for thousands of years, Lara sets off but finds trouble in the Illuminati, a society hell bent on ruling the world and using the treasure’s time-manipulating powers to do so. The charge against her is led by Manfred Powell (played by Iain Glen) and fellow explorer Alex West (played by Daniel Craig), which results in both sides working with each other in order to get the treasure. But with the alignment coming closer every day and only one person being able to obtain the treasure, who will be the true Tomb Raider. Though the film didn’t do well with critics or audiences, the film, for a video game adaptation, feels the most similar to its source material and does its best to incorporating a lot of entertaining elements together to make something that isn’t great by any means, but is perfectly serviceable for what it’s doing. With a fitting plot, good acting, over-the-top action and appropriate tone, Tomb Raider is not as bad as you think it would be.

Bringing a video game franchise like Tomb Raider to a cinematic perspective is both a great idea while also being incredibly tricky to pull-off. On the one hand, the notion of exploring forbidden tombs and decrepit lost areas filled with unspeakable, sometimes supernatural, elements is one that could be taken advantage of very easily at any period of time. However, the tone needs to be handled with care, as the overly dramatic actions and moments like killing dinosaurs with handguns would not be easy to include in a film that needed a hint of realism and grounded-ness to keep them invested. Thankfully, the movie seems to capture that mixture fairly well; with plenty of slow moments that build up the actual quest, then the threats become a lot crazier and less realistic. While this is done fairly well, it doesn’t escape the fact that the actual story is pretty messy and honestly not that interesting. It’s not an origin story of any sort, so its purpose is instead to show off the titular character and her world in a cinematic approach, which means less focus is put on development, set-up, worldbuilding or anything like that and instead more on the crazy extremes, the action, the over-the-top stunts, the treasure hunting and the overall coolness of the character, much like typical action movies of the time that were more ‘Boom’ than think. While the first two halves of the film keep you invested surprisingly nicely, the last third is where it drops whatever sensibility it had and goes a bit too much into its own strange rules, slowing the film’s climax down and ultimately making the finale feel pretty empty.

The character of Lara Croft is pretty fleshed out and a fun figure to focus on; she is tough and explorative, yet also sophisticated and proper. She has the wit and smarts to outwit any trap or enemy in her way, yet is mixed with an extreme lust for action and danger that makes her a bit of a thrill junky, someone who would willingly throw themselves into danger so that they can feel awesome once they beaten it. That comes across very well in this portrayal and a lot of that comes from Jolie’s performance. While she is home to a fair share of controversy out of work, her lifestyle during the time of this film was very adventurous and risky, making her an extreme wild-star; filming her own drug takings, making out in public, going to S&M bars, even keeping a vial of her then husband Billy Bob Thornton’s blood around her neck. While she has settled down recently, this mindset at the time really brought Lara’s character to life as it would have felt very natural to her. Overall, it is a fun and good performance. That is how it goes with the rest of the cast too, Daniel Craig is pretty fun as Lara competitor/friend even if his American accent is pretty bad, Iain Glen is pretty good as the bad guy, and he and Lara share this real fun back-and-forth relationship, where they respect each other’s strengths yet constantly try to outwit the other, they have great chemistry with the other and it leads to a lot of fun interactions. Sometimes the cliché characters can be a bit too much like the sidekick tech wizard played by Noah Taylor is pretty annoying and Jon Voight as the father is pretty generic.

The action is the movie was criticised for having no emotional impact and that is a far complaint. As the story is not too heavy on fleshing out an emotional story, it means the action cannot really be as impactful as it could be. In the climax, its at its most apparent where the resolution and final battle feels really drawn and not nearly as cool as it thinks its being. With that said though, the rest of the action throughout the movie is a ton of fun to watch. True it does have a lot of dated elements like some flashy lens trick, a lot of weird editing, a lot of pointless slow motion and some bad generic rock songs, but the action often balances that particular balance between kinda dumb and really awesome. The usage of the sets are really fun which leads to a lot of high-flying fight scenes that don’t feel slow and uneventful and this level of extreme action feels perfectly in sync with what happens in the games; fighting sentient ancient stone golems doesn’t feel that strange next to a T-Rex. The effects do show their age as they aren’t very good, mainly on the monsters, but the movie really utilizes its locations for creative fight scene and ambient atmosphere, made even better when some of the movie was shot in a real temple, the Ta Prohm temple located in Cambodia. For a film about tomb raiding, being in an actual temple shooting does give the location a much-needed realistic atmosphere that, despite how little time is spend their, adds a lot.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider (despite having very little Tomb Raiding in it) is not as bad as it’s made out to be. Maybe because of the backlash that comes with video game movies or people not being able to get into this kind of film, but as a video game adaptations goes, it gets a lot closer than most and is far more entertaining than others. The movie could have expanded upon itself into something greater, like a female oriented Indiana Jones film franchise, yet that never came to be as it only produced one sequel that did even worse, and a reboot film that was equally as polarizing. While one of video game’s first female action stars was not as popular on the cinema screen, she will never be forgotten on the small screen. Maybe not the most qualified movie ever, but one that is at least worth exploring to see what lies within.