Review of Tomb Raider (2018) by Norse — 27 Mar 2018

The movie exceeded my expectations substantially. I have to admit that I initially thought Alicia Vikander was a poor choice to portray Lara, as I remembered Lara's look differently from the games. In practice, she is playing an unusually believable Lara with substantially better acting than I've seen in major Hollywood productions recently. Key to the experience for me was that the audience can actually see Lara grow: she doesn't start out all powerful but instead she fails, tries again and perseveres. Major kudos for the decision to cast her, really impressive. Walton Goggins as the bad guy was also an inspired decision - he comes across with backstory and motivation, a feat few action films achieve.

Graphics and sound track were top notch, as expected, and the pacing of the plot that other reviewers complain about was something I thought was very well warranted - I enjoyed the first two thirds of the movie more than the hectic resolution in the last third.

Overall, this movie was great; my only misgiving is that they didn't stick even closer to the video games storyline and one deviation is a bit more cliché than others (won't spoil it, just thought it was unnecessary).