Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Le berceau de la vie

An entertaining movie, but some stuff should have been redone or just cut out to keep the pace of the movie going I was prepared to walk out of the theatre when she punched the shark, honestly...that isn't even video game material. While like the first one, the plot is a bit thin and kind of milked out to keep it going...as most people would have guessed, the main area of interest lies within Angelina Jolie herself, she is much sexier in this film than the last.

This film is nothing special, I'd say more matured than the first one, but it's fun to watch while kickin back and eating pizza or something.

3 out of 5 stars

The movie centers on Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) who is assigned by the British Intelligence -MI6- to discover the Pandora box that the baddies (Ciaran Hinds and Til Schweiger) want to find with the purpose of ruling the world . She is helped by an imprisoned mercenary (Gerard Butler) that will be freed , and two sympathetic underlings who appeared in the first part (Noah Taylor and Christhopher Barrie) . They'll have to confront amount of dangers , adventures and risks until reach their aims .

Run-of-the-mill action film because from the beginning to the final the frenetic action , thrills and fast movement are continued and unstopped . The picture blends emotion , intrigue , thriller , suspense , rip-roaring scenes and a little bit of violence when the fights happen . It is a film pretty bemusing and entertaining . It's a typical modern action film : continuous struggles in leaps and bounds , running men while are shooting and interminable pursuits . Besides , there are spellbound landscapes of various countries where the starring are traveling around the world to resolve the enigmas . The ending confrontation amongst the protagonists and enemies on the Kilimanjaro's skirts is breathtaking . The picture is similar to previous part with the difference in this latter there is an adventure chum (Gerard Butler) playing a type of ¨buddy movie¨ role. Thus , the storyline is basically a rehash of the former picture . Just as in the first film, there are several scenes in which the live-action Lara mimics are mingled with the computer generator effects . The film attained moderated success at box office , less than the first one , and not as good as the anterior . I don't know if the producers are going to make a third part .

David Tattersall's cinematography is glittering and glimmer as is well reflected on the awesome and impressive outdoors in charge of the production designer Petruccelli . Alan Silvestri's music is atmospheric and marvelous . The motion picture was well directed by Jan De Bont (Speed) . It is very spectacular , it is a film for adrenaline lovers . The yarn will appeal to Angelina Jolie and Lara Croft videogames fans.

This second movie in the 'Tomb Raider' series was a disapointment for me. I was not a great fan of the first one either. Certainly Angelina Jolie is as sexy as you can get, but there is too little else in her character to make her the female James Bond that the authors of the series want her to be. Even the sentimental track in this second movie does not succeed to make her more real. Director Jan de Bont succeeded much better with the original story in 'Speed' or the reality-TV like effects in 'Twister'. In 'Tomb Raider 2' he is just mixing a potion of James Bond with a little bit of Indiana Jones, without too much of a result. If you did not see it yet, you may as well wait for the DVD. 6/10 on my personal scale.

Let's face it, the James Bond franchise has become rather limp lately. "The World Is Not Enough" was a debacle of miscasting and an an endless parade of meaningless subplots and tertiary characters. "Die Another Day" suffered from much of the same, but was also saddled with an inexplicable amount of stereo feedback and one of the oddest (if catchiest) theme songs in recent memory. The series has been re-energized with the new entry "The Cradle Of Life," a high-spirited, far-reaching film that doesn't quite succeed but is such an improvement on the originals that you're ready to overlook all that.

Actually, this is a review of "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life", the sequel to 2001's abysmally dull video-game-based film "Tomb Raider." Angelina Jolie is back as sexy, gun-toting archeologist Lara Croft, and at first glance, it's easy to mistake her for Bond, Jane Bond. Lara is a British citizen of refined taste, highly competent in various forms of weaponry, travels around the globe to exotic locations, has friends (and lovers) in virtually every port, uses a wide variety of nifty gadgets, has an amusing yet dry form of wit, looks fabulous, and routinely saves the world from a madman bent on global domination. She's a better 007 than Timothy Dalton in any case.

The film begins with Lara diving into a sunken temple off the coast of Greece. While there, she is attacked by Chinese mercenaries, her support crew killed and left for dead, the mercenaries making off with a mysterious glowing orb. Seems that mad scientist Jonathan Reiss (Ciaran Hinds) is looking for Pandora's Box, and the orb is the key to finding it. Lara is appointed by MI:6 with stopping Reiss because opening the box would unleash an amazingly nasty plague upon the world. Besides her support staff of Hillary (Chris Barrie) and computer expert Bryce (Noah Taylor), Lara joins forces with ex-lover Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler), a shifty mercenary and the only person who knows how to get to the mercenaries who stole the orb in the first place. And of course, time is running out.

Jolie is excellent as Lara Croft, and there probably isn't an actress around who would be better cast in the role. Jolie has the physicality, the look, the voice, and the attitude to pull off the role effortlessly. She was the only redeeming factor in the first film, and she's great to watch here. The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Hinds refrains from chewing up too much of the scenery, but he brings to mind some of the more notable Bond villains of recent times. Butler is great to look at, but his performance is far too low-key and deadpan for a movie as bombastic as this one wants to be, especially when he's paired with Jolie, who enters each seen with a relishing look in her eyes. Taylor again acts as a dry kind of comic relief, and he displays far more chemistry with Jolie than Butler does.

One of the biggest improvements in this film is the director. Replacing Simon West (responsible for the monotonous "Con Air") is Jan de Bont ("Speed"), a much more competent director even if some of his films are only barley entertaining ("The Haunting"). de Bont has a knack for action on a small scale, most vividly in a gun-fight staged in a laboratory/office, but his large scale pieces, like Lara body-gliding off of one of Hong Kong's tallest buildings, lack drama. Still, de Bont has chosen good locations and sets for the film, and there is a blessedly welcome lack of the "Matrix"-style visuals and candy-colored bombast so popular in action films of recent memory. He is nothing if not up to task. The film operates well within its own set of rules and physics, unlike many other films that tend to sacrifice internal logic for cheap stunts.

As much of an improvement on the first film as this is, there are still flaws. The script, while improving ten-fold on the original, still falls flat on several occasions, sometimes held up only by Jolie's confident line readings. At almost two hours, the film displays a desperate need for tighter scenes and a quicker pace while simultaneously leaving some scenes cut too quickly. The movie can be very easily divided into stages, which may hold true to the spirit of the video game's levels, but often leaves the audience doing nothing more than predicting when the DVD chapter cuts will occur in six months. Also, like the James Bond films, there is rarely any doubt that Lara will escape any dire situation she finds herself in. Like 007, we always know the hero will prevail in the end, which robs some scenes of the tension needed to excite the audience.

Despite some of these flaws, "The Cradle Of Life" is a fine movie and a good way to spend 2 hours on a summer afternoon. Jolie obviously enjoys the role, and if nothing else, the film is worth it for that alone. Here's hoping the third entry into the series is even better than the this one. 7 out of 10.

Although Cradle of Life won't go down in movie history as an all-time classic, I am mystified at why so many critics and moviegoers hated it.

In my opinion, this movie is much better than the first Tomb Raider film. The first film was entertaining, make no mistake, but it still had too much of a comic book feel and 'Angelina Jolie' (qv) had not yet gotten a firm grasp of the Lara Croft role. In Cradle of Life, both Lara and Jolie show newfound maturation, and this makes her (both actress and fictional character) much more interesting to watch. Heck, even Jolie's faux British accent is more convincing the second time around. I was one of the many who protested when she was cast in the role; the first film left be unconvinced, but she finally won me over in her second outing.

The story is also more interesting in the second film, with the whole Pandora's Box angle being something more worthy of Tomb Raider than the tired old "conspiracy out to take over the world" plot of the first film.

There are some aspects of the second film that I didn't care for as much. Lara, for one thing, is far more deadlier this second time around and at one point seriously considers gunning down a man in cold blood. This type of behavior is more fitting for James Bond than Lady Lara Croft. But once I got used to the idea of Lara Croft 007, I didn't mind it so much. (Indeed, if Hollywood ever follows through with it's long-threatened female Bond film, they could do far worse than get Angelina Jolie for the role of Jane(?) Bond.)

What appealed to me in Cradle of Life is how familiar Lara, her background, and her supporting characters have become with only one previous film under their belts. No time is spent explaining who she is and why she lives in such a huge mansion (which sadly appears only briefly). This level of familiarity, of character comfort, is something I've only ever seen once before -- in the Bond series.

Cradle of Life also features some most impressive set pieces that may not necessarily advance the story, but are great to watch, such as a zoom in from outer space on Lara riding a motorcycle, an incredible zoom-in shot THROUGH the window of Croft Manor, and a great scene of Lara shooting at targets while riding a horse -- sidesaddle!

Sadly, the critical and box office failure of Cradle of Life probably guarantees no further entries in the series, and even if it does continue, Jolie looks ready to follow Audrey Hepburn's lead and put acting on the back burner in favor of humanitarian work so the role will probably go to another (possibly less talented) actress. If this turns out to be the case, I believe the Lara Croft series looks set to be remembered as fondly as the Derek Flint films of the 1960s.

Anyone who has been scared away by the bad reviews could do worse than to rent a copy from their local video store and check it out. You might be surprised at how much fun the movie is.