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Lady Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) lives in a mind-boggling and vast country estate with her
loyal butler Hillary (Chris Barrie) and private weapons system designer Bryce (Noah Taylor), who devises things like a huge killer robot to keep Lara at the top of her game.
The game? Tomb raiding for antiquities, a career she learned from her beloved, now deceased dad (Jon Voight, Jolie's real-life father). A once-every-5,000 years
convergence of the planets combined with the discovery of a ticking 'key' sets Lara off on her latest worldwide adventure to stop the evil organization Illuminati from gaining
Godlike control of time itself.
What do you expect from a computer game given flesh and blood in a supermovie combining high
tech and high fashion? Don't strain your mental faculties. Just sit back, dig into your popcorn tub, and enjoy cyber reality unfolding on the big screen.
Worry not about the plot being silly and improbable. Don't call Lara Croft "Jane Bond" — just behold her superbly performed stunts, her great unmade-up looks, her
fashion ramp swagger, and stop wondering whether or not she's wearing a bra. Close your eyes to certain incredible details like—when everyone else on an expedition to
a frozen northern land is wearing fur-lined parkas, up comes Lara in a windblown whale-gray designer cape revealing nothing more than a skin-tight sweater with matching cling
pants underneath. (Well, goddesses don't catch cold, do they?) It's useless to demand logic and reason from a movie whose plot exists both as a support system and a
showcase for special effects. And boy, are they many to gawk at! And Jolie, supple, shapely and athletic at the center of them all makes a splendid Lara Croft, making
the computer game character alive without turning her into a real human being. (Overplaying by Jolie would have made Lara Croft appear like a real person with a
personality, but no—Jolie respects the cyber-creature quality of Lara Croft and is careful to interpret her as such. This makes her a good and intelligent actress).
Lara Croft Tomb Raider is an adventure movie—take it as nothing more and nothing less than that. Will your family enjoy the movie? There's a great chance they will, particularly if they play the computer game. People who like exotic locations and watching movies like
Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Mummy Returns, Romancing the Stone, Indiana Jones, etc. will find in this movie elements both magical, mystical and
New Age, particularly in the Cambodia sequences (where huge cobweb-wrapped stone creatures come to life only to be shattered like clay pots when hit by bullets, just like
computer game targets). See, Lara Croft is something of what we'd call a psychic in our culture, moved by intuition and saved by it as well. Just make sure these
elements are explained well to inquisitive youngsters.
(Date reviewed: June 29, 2001)
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