When you think about video game movies, you normally associate them with horrible experiences. In very few cases, you get the mediocre ones, or the somewhat welcome "so bad it's good" category. For this Tomb Raider video game based movie; which is a reboot of the previous two Angelina Jolie led installments, I have to honestly say that it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, or amazing, but the big compliment I can give this video game movie is that it wasn't bad.
The other big compliment I can give here is that Alicia Vikander is a good Lara Croft. She essentially makes the movie, and is the primary reason to see it. Vikander has a good mix of looking fit enough to do the physical work, capable to hold her own in fights, and is still able to show that she isn't flawlessly unstoppable. "Less cartoony and more human" seems to be what they were going for, and it worked. I thought Walton Goggins as the antagonist wasn't bad either, but I would have to get into spoilers as to why I liked his villainous role.
Directed by Roar Uthaug, this adaptation was smart enough to lean more towards the action adventure aspects of the character. Action set piece, after action set piece, after action set piece, after action set piece, seems to be the mantra for this movie. There were some exposition scenes, but they were usually immediately followed by another action set piece. Several of those action set pieces like a bike sequence, a chase sequence on boats, to a stealth sequence, and several others, were actually all rather entertaining to watch.
What I wished they would have given us more of though, were the puzzles. Yes, raiding a tomb is involved in this film, but the puzzles that goes with all that simply weren't that compelling. That's what I would call the most disappointing part of this movie, because Indiana Jones proved that with films like this, you want to give a movie audience some memorable puzzles.
So despite the initial feeling that "Tomb Raider" would be just another bad video game movie, I'm happy to say that I could recommend this to people. Not everybody mind you, but there are many who would be entertained by this.
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