Ever since this movie was announced I was curious to see it. The original movies with Angelina Jolie are two of my favourites and one of the first games I ever remember playing was a Tomb Raider one. So I knew, at the very least, that I would have a good time watching this. However, I missed my chance when it was in theatres until I recently found that it had been put onto Netflix UK.
This by no means a perfect movie, in fact there are a few things I would definitely change or wish were different (I’ll get to those soon) but I had fun from start to finish and would consider this a favourite. The story was simple but entertaining and the pacing was fairly good. It definitely works as an origin story and I hope this is going to be the start of a series because I would love to see where things would go from here. Plus, there was definitely room left for more movies to follow.
There were things about the pacing that could have been better. The majority of scenes that happened in the tombs came much later than I was expecting and it did throw me slightly but Lara’s adventure does start fairly quickly and so, for the most part, I found the structure satisfying enough. The action scenes were well executed and it’s visually pleasing. There are a good mixture of comical scenes and incredibly intense things which stops the movie from ever going stale or repetitive.
On the most basic level the story is entertaining and a lot of what I expected from a Tomb Raider movie. However, saying that, I feel like Lara was underused. First of all, Alicia Vikander did a fantastic job. I loved Lara in this just as much as I have in any previous versions. She was fun, badass, had some depth to her, and I actually loved the fact that although she could fight and was really intelligent, she wasn’t Wonder Woman. She had her flaws and she often learnt along the way. It was very satisfying to see her grow as the movie progressed. However, it feels like her character hit a brick wall and they could have gone so much further with her. That being said, it does seem like there were plans (or at least hopes) to make more movies in which I’m sure her character would be developed further and given even more depth.
I do hope that happens. While not perfect, this movie was a good time and did get a lot of things right. There’s so much potential for this vision of the Tomb Raider world and characters to be expanded.
Rating: ★★★★ /5
wonderoes 
I honestly felt like this movie has been getting more criticism than it deserves. Glad to see someone giving it a more positive review. I had a lot of fun with the movie and I actually enjoyed the 3rd act reveal quite a bit. Chris is right as the movie was able to balance the exposition with the action sequences fairly well and never got too bogged down with too much dialogue while explaining just enough to give the 3rd act reveal some perspective. I also felt that the chemistry between Lara Croft and her father was fairly well realized despite the lack of screen time the characters shared, that’s probably a testament to Alicia Vikander and Dominic West as actors. Now I heard about tomb rider 2 getting canceled. is that right?
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