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

Starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciarán Hinds, Christopher Barrie, Noah Taylor, Djimon Hounsou.
Directed by Jan de Bont.
Written by Dean Georgaris.
Produced by Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures.
118 minutes.

LVJeff's Rating: 5/10

Adversity-Free

Simply put, Lara Croft is boring. Her second movie, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, only reinforces what her first movie showed us -- that she's not readily approachable to other characters nor to the audience. She's very much a loner, distant from those around her, as if she's very afraid of developing emotional attachments to anyone. She's so aloof to other people that she creates distance from the movie watchers as well. Getting to know her isn't much fun, and that makes following her adventures a chore. She doesn't seem to have a lot of challenges anyway -- she gets through every scrape with the utmost cool, reducing suspense along the way. She doesn't shirk at danger and faces down impending peril with a subdued snarl. And this scenario never changes, so watching her in action feels repetitive and unrewarding.

I thought a while about what's wrong with Lara Croft, and I've come up with this hypothesis: the action hero that knows no adversity is an action hero we can't attach ourselves to. Action for action's sake is boring, but action with something at stake is electric. With Lara, a treasure hunter with no obvious motivation (greed? fortune? glory?) nothing ever feels at stake. Sure, she has the world to save, but that's very job-like -- I'm talking about having something personal to gain or lose. She has no one to avenge. She has no one to protect nor rescue. She has no insecurities to overcome. She practically feels no pain. She's good at everything and smarter than everyone else, so she has nothing to prove to anyone. She just has no adversity. As a result, we have nothing to attach to when we watch her.

And so Jan de Bont and his crew's competent delivery of an action movie more effective than the first Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is mostly in vain. Lara fights harpoon-gun-wielding bad guys in a crumbling cave. Lara has target practice while riding horseback. Lara has a staff-weapon battle with a skilled criminal. Lara dives from a building and glides using a special glider suit. And so on and so on. The sequences are executed fairly well, and the glider scene in particularly is quite nicely shot. But through it all, Lara doesn't really have much to lose, and doesn't think she'll lose anyway, so we think the same thing. We don't feel involved. Yawn.

It seems almost useless to comment further on the weak event logic -- some of it is pretty ludicrous, from facing off against a roaring (yes, roaring) shark to a scene in which the majority of the characters look rather stupid for taking the long, scary way into a cavern when one of the other characters just drops in from the top via helicopter. Lara gets shot at about a million times (and she avoids getting hit with ease -- the one time she does get hit, she finds it something specifically worth getting even for) but once the villains are upon her, it's gun-to-the-head, wait, and talk so that she can get away later. But I won't say anymore. My point is it doesn't matter what they do for story sequencing, logical or nonsensical, because if the hero is boring, we won't care.

Once again, too bad because Angelina Jolie is still a perfect Lara Croft. She plays her part with noticeable enthusiasm. However, in the first Tomb Raider, her character was one-note. Now here was a chance to make up for that; was it so hard to do? After all, Lara has so much potential -- she's keeping her emotions locked inside, and when we see a glimpse of the anger contained within her (as we do in an early sparring sequence), we get a taste of something real, something we can hold on to, just waiting to be let loose. Then the writers make the mistake of giving her a partner she finds expendable, so it's back to being ultra-cool and detached again. I was hoping The Cradle of Life would offer Jolie's alter ego a chance to spice things up and add something new to the mix. No such luck.

©Jeffrey Chen, Jul. 26, 2003

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