Angelina Jolie looks uncannily like Lara Croft of the computer game Tomb Raider that forms the basis for the upcoming film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Jolie is actually more attractive than the virtual reality fighter, with her long braids, tight black sleeveless top, slim arms and legs with guns strapped to the hips, the small waist and, as everyone has surely noticed on the trailer, the massive bust.
There are also stunningly beautiful fashion points that never appear in the computer game. Jolie wears a thin, light-orange Sarong in a temple in Cambodia, and a chic fur-decorated long coat during an expedition in Iceland.
Director Simon West made it clear Jolie's on-screen glamor in the role of Lara Croft would be a major selling-point for the film. "I shouldn't say Angelina is our first choice candidate. In fact, we had never considered anyone else. Without her, we would not start shooting the film," West told Premiere Magazine in a recent interview.
Unfortunately, West has only succeeded in half of his endeavor. No doubt, Jolie is a sexy and cool fighter with superb action skills, but aside from Lara Croft, there aren't any cool characters and they're all hamstrung by a rather dull Indiana Jones-like plot.
Lara Croft lives in a stately British home, where she works out every day by fighting fearsome robots. In public she exists as a freelance photojournalist, but is, in fact, a wild adventuress continuing the career of her late father, played by Jolie's real-life dad Jon Voight.
The story begins at the run-up to a historic planetary alignment, which takes place only once every 5,000 years and causes a total eclipse. According to legend, the lost hidden halves of the Triangle of Light reunite during this event, and once the Triangle is united, this mysterious treasure will give its holder omnipotent powers, including the ability to turn back time and undo the past.
The righteous Lara Croft, following her father's manuscript guidance penned before he was murdered, and the evil group called Illuminati both want to seize the chance to find the two last Triangle pieces and attain this power. The Illuminati have hired the black-suited Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) to do the job, and he also happens to be the murderer of Lara's father. The evil Powell hires Lara's on-and-off lover Alex West (Daniel Craig), himself also a tomb raider, to be his assistant in the Triangle hunt.
Good and evil then duke it out in the caves of Cambodia's Angkor Wat and the bleak landscapes of Iceland. A major flaw in these sequences is that Lara Croft seems to dispatch her opponents simply too easily. The monsters in the caves are gigantic but not spectacular enough that the audience feels breathless or scared. The action is presented in such haste that we don't feel the emotional involvement of characters nor do we feel the thrill which can be found in Jackie Chan's (成龍) fast-paced and subtly-choreographed action scenes.
Most importantly, Lara does not face any threat from either Powell or the Illuminati. She kills the bad guys with ease and feels no conflict facing the lover-turned-enemy Alex West, with whom she alternately flirts and fights. In the beautiful scenes of the wilderness and inside the tomb, there is an adventure without thrill and a heroine without suffering.
For computer game lovers, the exciting scenes are those at Lara's London home, where she performs acrobatic bungee leaps between the ground floor and second floor of the huge house. Later she uses the bungee jumps to kill the intruding treasure thieves one-by-one with fast but elegant gestures. In this scene, the director successfully transformed the excitement and pleasure in playing the game Tomb Raider into pure visual entertainment. Pity it's only about 10 minutes of excitement. The rest of the time, Jolie is more of a fashion and beauty statement than an on-screen heroine.
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