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Lara Croft Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (Full Screen Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 18 November, 2003 Retail Price: $14.99 OUR Price: $13.49 You SAVE: $1.50! Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
Lara Croft Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (Full Screen Edition) Reviews
"Do you ever do anything the easy way?"
Following the first Lara Croft-based film in 2001, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider", Angelina Jolie resurrected her role as Lara Croft in the 2003 sequel "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life". Written by Steven E. de Souza, James V. Hart and Dean Georgaris, this second film finds Lara Croft searching a Greek temple that had been lost for many centuries until an earthquake made its location known. The temple had been created by Alexander the Great, but had been swallowed into the Aegean Sea during a much earlier earthquake. Swimming down into the depths with two companions, Lara enters the temple, which is quickly giving way to the enormous pressure from the sea above, but discovers an unusual orb being held by a huge statue. She quickly climbs up to get the orb, but others who also want the orb enter the tomb and are lead by a Chinese mafia leader, Chen Lo (Simon Yam). Chen gets the orb from Lara, who barely manages to escape the underwater temple alive. The orb is an ancient map to finding Pandora's box and those who paid Chen to retrieve it, under the leadership of Jonathan Reiss (Ciarán Hinds), want to sell its deadly power to the highest bidders. After being asked by British intelligence to locate the orb, Lara obtains assistance from an imprisoned mercenary named Terry Sheridan (Gerald Butler), who accompanies Lara to China in search of Chen and his Chinese mafia gang. Though they locate the gang, Reiss gets the orb after several well-choreographed fisticuffs between Lara & Sheridan with Reiss's people and the Chinese gang. However, Lara is finally successful in obtaining the orb from Reiss at his lab, which is located in a busy shopping center in Hong Kong. With the secret to interpret the orb, Lara discovers the whereabouts of Pandora's box and sets off to retrieve it, but Reiss and his men are hot on her tail.
With a lot of fun choreographed fights and various special effects, "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life" is an entertaining film and was certainly better than the first Lara Croft film in 2001. Memorable scenes include the Greek temple, Lara's home in England, the trip to China, Hong Kong and the scenes in Africa. Overall, I rate it with 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars. It's not a great film, but it is entertaining.
Too much fun for words
First of all, Lawrence Bernarbo's review is excellent and nearly the last word on the film. Given that, here's a bit more. First, thanks very much for Jan de Bont for getting the Lara Croft idea back on track after Simon West's disastrous creation of the first Lara Croft, which was so bad that one critic referred to it as the first "post-content" movie. In fact, in one of those delicious "living well is the best revenge" moments, Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) brought back Steven de Souza to write the story. In creating the first Tomb Raider, West had rejected all three of de Souza's drafts. So, Paramount, can we please keep Steven de Souza now?
So what, exactly, is so much fun about a movie based on a video game? Well, first of all, of course, there's Jolie herself, who has created a truly great, mythic character. Okay, I admit, the mere words "female archeologist" would have hooked me to begin with, but when you turn the female archeologist into Wonder Woman, well, I'm just doomed to hopeless addiction. Second, it really is a very nice script, that obeys the most important rules of drama. There's a famous rule in drama that if there's a shotgun over the hearth in the first act, it must be fired by the end of the third. In this case, the shotgun is Lara's absolute certainty that "Anything lost is meant to be found." She is to discover, after much hardship and no small loss of life on all sides, that "Some things are not meant to be found." What she must do to make sure that some lost things are not found is what drives the deeper, more personal struggle.
As just about everyone has noted, Jolie was clearly born for this role. It can't be easy breathing life into a cartoon character, but she actually transcends the cartoonish aspects of Lara Croft and creates a living, breathing, slightly conflicted heroine. It helps that, unlike the Bond or Indiana Jones movies, we actually see the character practicing her skills. After all, don't you secretly wonder how Bond or Jones find the time to stay in shape? It's nice to see the hard work that goes into the famous fighting skills. In fact, in another gratifying moment, the mock battle with staffs at home is repeated for real in her battle with one of the lesser villains. Just one more shotgun over the fireplace.
Finally, Cradle of Life is just an amazingly pretty film, and that is partly what distinguishes it from its rivals. The sheer, ballet-like choreography of the stunts, from the famous dive off the skyscraper to sliding down the ropes upside down is so beautiful it leaves you with a wonderful feeling of, well, rightness. And it may be this consummate grace that gives the film its deeply feminine appeal. Lara Croft doesn't just fight on equal terms with men; she does so with a profoundly female grace of movement, which answers the question: "What does it mean to be a female action hero?" In this sense, Lara is more like Sarah Michelle Geller's Buffy than like the women of The Long Kiss Goodnight or the Kill Bill series.
In the end, the director, writers, cast and crew have created a truly satisfying action romp that sets new standards for female characters. They deserve our thanks for saving the Lara Croft myth from post-content hell. Thank you all.
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