Review of Tomb Raider (2018) by Ahmed A — 16 Jun 2018

One of the things that I liked about this movie is that it didn't rely so much on fantasy, of course it has some supernatural elements, but it has some sense of reality either when it comes to the adventure of Lara Croft or the depiction of Lara Croft herself, or at least at the beginning. She seemed as she is just a well-trained girl who is fit and has some good fighting skills, but as the movie proceeds and Lara becomes at risk, we see that she is more like a superhero rather than a good fighter, and that didn't work for me at all. Also, she is implausibly smart and quick-witted, and that saves a lot of time that should have been spent on putting some puzzle pieces and discovering important things.

Surprisingly, Lara Croft wasn't likable at the beginning, but as the movie goes forward she became more and more interesting, and that, in large part, due to Alicia Vikander appealing performance, she really nailed it! Alicia Vikander proved that was the right cast choice for Lara Croft, whether from her appearance, or her acting abilities in the dramatic moments. Speaking of drama, I am so happy that this movie didn't try to be a tearjerker movie, specially at displaying Lara's past and her father. But, that doesn't mean that we got a good origin story of Lara, actually everything else about Lara's past and her story with her father was terrible! The origin story here is not just uninspired, but it's a total mess.

There are some plot holes in the movie. In addition, there are a lot of exposition, and a lot of explaining. And the dialogue in general isn't very good. The plot itself is somewhat muddled. Also, there is a stupid plot-twist.

The action sequences are by no means special or inventive, but what makes up for it is the camera work in these action sequences that resembles the video games. All the camera movements and the camera angles are pretty much look like those of video games, and that was really cool! While I didn't the action isn't intense, I was very entertained by it.

That being said, The movie still has a cinematic feel, and it looked very nice.

Thankfully, this movie is not CGI-heavy, as I mentioned above that it didn't rely so much on fantasy, but when there are some scenes that require using special effects, the CGI looked a bit poor.

The humor isn't so great, but Nick Frost has two cameos, and he was hilarious as usual.

The villain is clichéd and very weak.

Of course, there is a sequel bait ending.

Despite all its major flaws, I enjoyed Tomb Raider!

Tomb Raider is the only movie that based on a video game that feels like a video game, for better or worse!

(6/10).