Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Instant Favorite.

A Masterpiece!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

I don't know why the ratings for Jolies Tomb Raider movies are so low. The story may be a bit cheesy but so were the games. Angelina's performance as Lara is perfect. Love rewatching this from time to time. Fun movie. I think after the new adaption 2018 tomb raider movie maybe gamers and fans of Lara will appreciate Jolies Tomb Raider a lot more.

Good performances from a number of very talented supporting actors, and an excellent portrayal of Lara Croft by Angelina Jolie cannot save this movie from incompetent filmmaking.Maybe there was once logically and tonally coherent vision for what this film was to be, but what ended up in theaters was a total mess.The ridiculous plot is not the problem, in fact the story is good precisely because it is so over the top and just "out there". It provides a lot of interesting locations and original scenes.Which don't, you know, actually add up to anything fun or memorable because the editing is so terrible.It's telling that the only scene where the stakes feel high is the opening action sequence which is revealed to just be Lara's elaborate training room. The "fake" training room feels more dangerous (and cool! and memorable!) than anything in the rest of the movie which is supposed to be "real". Yeah.The editing is bad. As in "worst I've ever seen" terrible. At a storyboarding level, key establishing shots, connecting shots, reaction shots etc. are missing. The dramatic pacing is completely off, narrative foreshadowing/callbacks are MIA, otherwise good fight scenes mishandled. Characters do inexplicable things. Events happen for no reason. There are a few great visual scenes, and some good framing and composition, and some nice stunt work, but it never joins up into sometime worth your time.

Lady Lara Croft might sound like a prim and proper member of the English upper class but we soon see that she is far from that as she enters what appears to be an ancient tomb and ends up battling a robot… while wearing short shorts and a tee shirt that shows of her ample assets! This is just a training sequence to give us an idea what she can do. It turns out that a once in five thousand year planetary alignment is about to happen and a sinister organisation is desperate to get their hands on 'the key' which will enable then to get their hands on the two pieces of an ancient artefact that will allow them to control time itself. It turns out that Lara's late father found the key some time earlier and placed it in her country house. She finds it when it starts ticking and starts trying to find out what it is. This leads her to Manfred Powell who wants the key for himself and soon steals it with the help of a small army of mercenaries. If Lara is to stop him getting his hands on the device she will have to follow him to a temple in Cambodia, Venice then finally to a remote corner of Siberia.If you are looking for something serious you will be a bit disappointed but if you want some good silly fun with plenty of action you could do a lot worse. The story is simple enough with no real surprises but it is told fairly well. Often in this sort of film there is a bit too much forced humour but thankfully this is played fairly straight. There is lots of action and this is rather good; given the films age the CGI still looks pretty decent. Angelina Jolie does an impressive job as our eponymous heroine; it isn't surprising that she went on to play more action leads. The rest of the cast is pretty solid too; notably Daniel Craig and Iain Glen. Having never played the video games I can't say how the character or story compares… possibly an advantage as I had no idea what Lara Croft 'should' be like. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody wanting an hour and a half of silly action with little content that could be considered offensive.

Video game adventuress Lara Croft comes to life in a movie where she races against time and villains to recover powerful ancient artifacts. Lara Croft Tomb Raider is easily one of the most underrated Video- game movies ever made it's stylish, sexy and action packed and Angelina Jolie is the perfect Lara she owns the part and every time she goes against some ancient statue that comes alive or even the very first scene with the robot were really cool it's for sure cheesy and over the top at times but unlike other based on video game movies this is one that for around 80% of it it's based upon the game and that's what i appreciated about it also having Jon Voight and Angelina in the same movie talking to each other was something that really worked because father and daughter have a really good chemistry, Iain Glen as the villain is something that seems to work each time since he was also in Resident Evil 2 and 3 and he is going to reprise his role in the upcoming 6th and final installment and last but not least Daniel Craig 007 is in this film too and he has an American accent and he was pretty good too. To be honest this is a pretty cool action packed movie and it deserves more respect than hate.