By Tanya Batson-Savage, Staff Reporter
Angelina Jolie in the action movie 'Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life', now playing in theatres islandwide. - Contributed
THE WORST thing about Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is that it fails to have the decency to be an awful movie. Instead, it settles for being boring.
Cradle of Life is the sequel to 2001 flick based on the game 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider'. The movie begins by pretending to be the adventure flick it should be. Unfortunately, adventures are supposed to be fun, and one is quickly disabused of any notion of having any fun in this movie. Within a few minutes of starting it dives into the bottomless pool of boredom and refuses to resurface.
While a few of the final moments of Cradle of Life are the best in the picture - best being very relative - it is quite unfortunate that one has to sit through the rest of the movie to get there.
This time around, Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) is searching for Pandora's Box, a journey which takes her to all the far corners of the earth. Of course, she will attempt to save the world, this time by keeping the myth-born box out of the reach of Jonathan Reiss (Ciaran Hinds). Reiss hatches a plan which seems to have been born on a sketch pad belonging to Pinky and the Brain, with a bit too much influence from Pinky.
As though the ridiculous plotting was not enough, Reiss is a villain who is so unimpressive he could not scare Bambi. He is certainly not worthy of any of the on-screen time he was given, and a painted stick could have been used in his stead. The character seemed to have been thrown in simply because they needed someone, anyone, trying to take over the world, and he was the only person who answered the call to 'Wanted: promising megalomaniac'.
Croft, in turn, is not much of a heroine, although she should have been. She is quick-witted, suave, sexy and powerful, but somehow the character fails in large part because what should have been impressive one-liners were just not. She is a believable character but is simply is no fun to watch.
The movie is, therefore, immediately crippled by an uninteresting hero and villain. Indeed, for their inability to create credible characters, Steven E. de Souza and James V. Hart should have their accreditation as writers revoked.
Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler), an old flame of Lara's, is thrown in to bring some sexual heat to the flick. Although the tension between himself and Lara may have created a few glowing coals, no blaze was started.
To top it off, director Jan de Bont does this movie a great disservice and should probably try to disown it. A large part of the problem with the movie comes from the fact that the pieces which should make it a great picture were basically ineffectively pieced together.
The most impressive stunts were performed without a target. As such, they seemed to simply have been put in to take up space and rather than keeping the energy going, tended to rob the picture of its adrenaline.
The fight choreography and action shots (many in slow motion) should have been thrilling, but they were not. The stunts were sometimes on the verge of being awesome, but veered off at the last moment.
Cradle of Life is a classic case of being less than the sum of its parts. Not worthy of a trip to the cinema, Cradle of Life is the kind of movie that you finish watching simply because you started watching it, and to change the channel would involve searching for the remote.
