Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) starring Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight and Daniel Craig

Tomb Raider Poster

I remember back in 2001 being quite excited to see this in the cinema.  However, the ENTIRE 97 minute run time my wife payed out on Angelina's breasts.  There had been articles in the paper about how the star had a C cup and Lara Croft had a DD cup and they compromised with padding Jolie up to a D cup and my wife (and I'm pretty sure her sister was there too) nothing but comments about how fake the breasts looked.  Kinda took me out of the movie.

Fast forward a few years and I get the DVD and my wife and I watch the movie with one of her friends - if you guessed another 97 minutes commenting on Jolie's breasts, you'd be right.  So the other night I watched this on my own.

Each time, I've enjoyed the movie as an action adventure movie.  Had this been Indiana Jones and the Triangle of Light - I still would have enjoyed this.  It's not a great movie but it's fun.  Jolie sets up her action cred which allowed her to do films like Salt and Wanted.  The aerial ballet scene was a great set piece showing us Lara using her brains and athleticism to take down a number of heavily armed intruders intent on stealing the mystical McGuffin she's found.  Because Jolie did a lot of her own stunt work I believed in her as Lara Croft - perhaps slightly more Goth version with black hair and outfits but it worked. 

I was intrigued by the idea that some of these artefacts can only be accessed during planetary alignments - because magic?  Which meant that Lara was literally racing against time as the next alignment wouldn't come for another 5000 years -  however at one point had Lara let them make the error they were going to make it would have solved her problems but wouldn't have made for much of a movie.  I could nit pick more but those things came after the movie was finished and I was following along the adventure as Lara proves herself smarter that the Illuminati and their henchmen.

I also enjoyed Christopher Barrie's Hillary the butler and Noah Taylor's techie Bryce.  Both offered support and light relief to the movie and I especially enjoyed Hillary's donning bulletproof vest and slippers while loading the shotgun during the invasion of Croft Manor. 

The movie still holds up fifteen years later and is worth watching if you enjoy the Indiana Jones or the Brendan Fraser Mummy series as I do.