Tomb Raider (2018)

Elevator Pitch: Lara Croft, now a cycle delivery girl, is called into the company office to take over after the disappearance of her father. But she refuses to sign and leaves with a key which gives her access to a secret room in the family tomb, where she finds information about her dad’s possible whereabouts. She flies to Kong Kong and finds a small ship whose captain takes her to a secret Pacific island, and after evading gun toting mercenaries and a villain controlling an archeological dig she eventually finds her father hiding in a cave. The adventure is just beginning.

Content: An unfeasable amount of time spent following the athletic Lara and she runs, jumps, swims and hangs over casms, so full marks to Alicia Vikander for all that. She cycles in London, and runs about in Aberdeen (Hong Kong) before getting to the secret island where dramatically she has to get to the river bank from the rusty wreck of a WWII bomber, suspended over a waterfall. Once captured by the villains she and her father have further adventures in the ancient, and slightly ridiculous, tomb network.

A View: I have got into the habit of researching the background to some of the movies I review and in this case I was prompted to check out Tomb Raider. On youtube you can find the history of Lara Croft  and the many versions of the game since 1996. This film closely follows Tomb Raider 2013 in all respects, even the look of Lara ( could be a song title). The research allowed me to understand the film, but whether it really makes a good action movie I’m not sure. So a watch for nothing if you like that sort of thing.

Additional Info: Those who know about these things determined that it would need to return $275 million to break even. The world wide gross was $274.7 million. The financiers must have been holding their breath.