Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life *** (2003, Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciarán Hinds, Chris Barrie, Noah Taylor, Djimon Hounsou, Til Schweiger) – Classic Movie Review 972

Speed director Jan de Bont’s 2003 Lara Croft sequel proves more than the equal of the highly popular original, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). And Angelina Jolie proves even feistier the second time around as the treasure-hunting adventuress action heroine, Lady Lara Croft, this time battling another daft and unfathomable plot as she races against time and Ciarân Hinds’s cheesily smirking baddie Jonathan Reiss to locate the deadly Pandora’s Box.

The yarn takes Lara and her hunky new companion Terry Sheridan (played by Gerard Butler) from the skyscrapers of Shanghai to an undersea temple in Africa, via some spectacular para-sailing, pole-vaulting into a helicopter, and parachuting into a Land Rover. Yep, you got it, Lara is a bit of a mover and groover, globe-trotter and a gymnast!

A brilliantly fit and credible Jolie takes it all in deadly earnest and is an awesome action heroine. Butler’s also very effective in a career-enhancing performance, while Djimon Hounsou (Kosa) and Til Schweiger (Sean) make impressive presences. And director de Bont takes it seriously too with no signs of spoof or camp, and he reminds us that he made Speed (1994) by rushing it along at a breakneck pace.

In Dean Georgaris’s screenplay (based on the story by Steven E de Souza and James V Hart), there are the same script problems as in the original, manifest in the choppy editing and in the obvious muddle trying to sort out a coherent plot. And there’s a bit too much of one-note smug villain Hinds. But this time all round the dialogue and credibility are noticeably better, while, as before, the action, sets and visual effects are all first rate.

But it didn’t go massive. Costing $95 million, it took only a disappointing $65 million at the US box office, and a total of $156,505,388 worldwide, ending the franchise. The original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider cost $115 million and took $131 million at the US box office, and a total of $274,703,340 worldwide.

And that was it for Lara in the 2000s. But, now we can expect a reboot any day soon, possibly with Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) 23-year-old British actress star Daisy Ridley.

Noah Taylor and Chris Barrie re-create their roles from the original as Bryce and Hillary. Ralf Beck, Gerald Kyd and Tom Wu play Sean’s henchmen.

One of Jolie’s stunt doubles is a man! Jolie is the only American-born actor in the movie.

The film was banned in China because ‘it damaged China’s reputation, giving the impression of a country in chaos, with no government and over-run by secret societies’.

The reboot came in March 2018, as Tomb Raider, with Alicia Vikander, Dominic West, and Walton Goggins.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 972 derekwinnert.com