johnlink ranks LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER (2001)
Sometimes you just want to watch something mind-numbingly simple which won’t require a single spent brain cell. We can be a masochistic species.
I watched LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER (2001) on 7.20.14. It was my second viewing of the film and first since it was in theaters 13 years ago.
I was a fan of the Tomb Raider games as a kid. They were innovative, fun, and challenging. The first movie adaptation of Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie as the adventurer Lara Croft, is not innovative, only sometimes fun, and definitely not challenging in any way.
This may already be one of the most dated movies to have been released in the 21st century. The game-to-movie conversion is weak, the action is mostly silly, and the musical score might be one of the worst of all time. If you can nominate a worse score, please feel free to do so in the comments below.
The games had Lara solving puzzles in mostly archaeological settings. She would go to a new level, have to solve some challenge, have to fight some odd creature or some enemy people, and then move forward. In the movie, they have sought out the basic elements, but have not done anything to spruce them up. The villains are played by Iain Glen and Daniel Craig, who would go on to play Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones and the newest James Bond, respectively. In this neither displays a particularly wonderful ability to create character, even if they would go on to do so shortly after in their careers. Additionally, Jon Voight is absolutely wasted in the role of Lara’s father (he is also Jolie’s real life father, so that works out).
Lara is looking for two halves of a triangle which will let the owner shift time. More accurately, she is trying to keep other people from gaining this ability. So when she gets the first half of the triangle, does she destroy it? No. That would be anti-climatic. Instead she takes it with her and lets it fall into enemy hands. But not for too long, because this can’t have an unhappy ending.
This is not an all time horrendous film, but there really are no redeeming qualities about it. Jolie fits the part physically and emotionally, but the script doesn’t really ask all that much of her. Over a decade after its release, there have been scores of entertaining action films which have done most everything better than TOMB RAIDER does it. Now that I have seen this again, I can’t imagine I would ever go back for a third time.
SCORES
FILM: 3; MOVIE: 5; ACTING: 4; WRITING: 3; BONUS: -1
Negative bonus point for an absolutely jaw-droppingly terrible musical score.
3+5+4+3-1=14
FINAL SCORE: 3.5 out of 10
johnlinkmovies 
Yeah but it’s got Angelina in it so it works.
True. Though I would watch Mr and Mrs Smith thirty times before I watched this again haha.
LOL me too