Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life

directed by Jan De Bont

starring Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds

Universal

 
The metallized stretch kevlar is impervious to projectiles, energy beams and cutting weapons -- everything except adolescent ogling.
The idea of a "female Indiana Jones" movie -- based on a phenomenally popular video game and starring one of the world's most desirable women -- was a pretty good one the first time around. Kids liked the action, it had grrl-power appeal, and anyone with a pulse was mesmerized by Angelina Jolie's hypnotic lips. However, amongst the mostly-mundane stunts, recoil-less gunplay, and Jolie's mesmerist act, the makers of the follow-up to Lara Croft: Tomb Raider forgot to include a compelling or even remotely original plot.

Sluggish as an Alaska-bound barge, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life's storyline for Level 1 is as follows, if anyone gives a damn: treasure-hunting heiress Lara -- along with a pair of soon-to-be extinct divers -- find a glowing orb in Alexander the Great's long-lost hideaway, which has been long-submerged off the coast of Santorini. The orb is soon stolen by Chen Lo (Simon Yam), a mercenary contracted by maniac death merchant Jonathan Reiss, played by Ciaran Hinds (Road to Perdition) . It seems that the orb is a coded map to the Cradle of Life, a fabled (and also long-lost) speck on the map from which where all life is supposed to have originated, for those blasphemy-minded. What's better yet, the Cradle of Life is also home to Pandora's Box, which -- shades of Indy and the Ark! -- wreaks great havok on nearby populations when opened. Naturally, Reiss wants this little nuclear suitcase -- and instead of holding a great eBay auction, he intends on selling it to a league of extortion-bent criminal masterminds.

First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.

Level 2: In order to track down Chen Lo in China, Croft springs British Army deserter/mercenary/former flame Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler, Dracula 2000, Mrs. Brown) from a Kazakhstan prison. Forming a tenuous alliance, the pair set off to retrieve the orb.

 
She'd be much cooler in the silversuit. Much cooler.
Levels 3-6: Borrowing pages from the 007 manual, Cradle of Life's producers put Croft and Butler through the usual action-sequence paces, including the obligatory parachuting, motorcycle riding, and hand-to-hand combat, with Croft wielding twin .45s so large and undoubtedly so heavy that Dirty Harry -- using a two-handed grip -- would be hard-pressed to fire with any accuracy. For flavor and unintended comic relief, there's also tree monsters and a laughably-drawn CGI shark (which Croft punches in the nose). As in the first Tomb Raider film, all of this excitement is set in Bond-trademarked exotic locations. But exotic locations and hand-me-down stunts didn't carry 007 in the "Timothy Dalton era", and they don't come close to saving this movie.

Besides being sex personified, Angelina Jolie is a very talented actress; one can see her playing Lara Croft once, for kicks. But twice, and with a B-movie script? To fathom that would require even more suspension of disbelief than this tedious film requires.

Indeed, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life plays like a video game with a broken controller; ultimately, the audience is the loser and the bean-counters and Jolie-pimps at Universal are the cackling victors.

Tomb Raider Movie: http://www.tombraidermovie.com/

Steve Stav