Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)

An action movie with an unlikable hero is crap. Lara’s supposed to be the female Indiana Jones, but we love Indy, he’s funny and roguish, he’s afraid of snakes. He’s tenacious and impatient, he’s realistic. Lara’s not afraid of snakes, she’s not afraid of anything, she’s never vulnerable not for an instant, she’s inhuman and very hard to relate to and therefore near impossible to like, not even the other characters in the movie really like her. So basing a movie on an unlikable character is a bad move. Not only is Lara hard to get to know, she’s hard to watch. Since she’s never in a situation that she can’t easily get out of there’s no tension, just action. Boring impersonal action, in slow motion. There are scads of action scenes in this movie, all of them slow, impersonal, and dull. Tomb Raider 2’s even bigger problem is that the scenes are completely unrelated to each other. Like distant galaxies hurtling away from each other at an ever increasing speed into infinity. It’s really no more than a list of action movie “tricks” that the director strung together in hope that it would add up to an actual movie.

Let’s have jetskis! CHECK

No, wait, let’s have jetskis to the XTREME! CHECK

Let’s reuse some sets from SeaQuest DSV! CHECK

Let’s have a soundtrack so crappy that it’s distracting! CHECK

Let’s have made up history that not even the characters can keep straight! CHECK

Let’s have Lara outrun bullets! CHECK

Let’s have Lara spot weld! CHECK

Let’s have Lara punch a shark! CHECK

Let’s then have her ride the shark! CHECK

Let’s have a pointless horse riding/target shooting scene… to the XTREME! CHECK

Let’s have the eurovillian use murder as a sales demonstration! CHECK

Let’s have a pointless motorcycle/sexual tension scene! CHECK

Let’s stage it on the Great Wall of China! CHECK

Let’s have Lara rappel down a mountain upside down while shooting people! CHECK

Let’s have Lara destroy a market in Shanghai! CHECK

Let’s add pole vaulting onto a helicopter to that scene! CHECK

Let’s have Lara & Terry dress like flying squirrels and glide over the city! CHECK

Let’s have Lara punch a shark! Have we had her punch a shark yet? Because we should!

I know it doesn’t seem like you can make much of a movie with that but in spite of this the movie runs for two hours! Two hours and absolutely nothing happens, just pointless action sequence slapped onto a pointless transportation/vehicle advert slapped onto another pointless action sequence. Also every time she talks about Alexander the Great it reminds me how crappy that movie was too. All in all movie bad bad avoid! Must watch XXX to cleanse the action palate.