Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life offers up some nice-looking shots in its 4K remaster, but ultimately this is not enough to help cover up the fact that this movie is as bad now as it was in 2003.
Video game movies have had a checkered past to say the least, and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is unfortunately part of what makes this so. The movie was a slight improvement on its predecessor, but that’s not giving it a whole lot of credit.
The movie itself centers around, obviously, Lara Croft played by Angelina Jolie, going after a map to find Pandora’s box, and then Pandora’s box itself. To help accomplish that task she employs Terry Sheridan, played by Gerard Butler, an ex-Royal Marine, to help her. Naturally there’s some sort of love connection here and they must accomplish their task before the evil Jonathan Reiss, played by Ciaran Hinds, gets his hands on the box because he wants to…well he wants…um…money I guess??
Look this movie’s plot is crumbling like an ancient rediscovered temple, and the characters and their motivations are just weak. Hind’s villain never has a good enough motivation, and he just feels empty and as if he is just a tool that is used to get Lara from one spot to another but the whole time you just don’t really care. The weird love angle that they try to force onto you with Butler’s character is just meh at best. I couldn’t help but think that somewhere there was a producer who refused to just let us have a female protagonist that doesn’t need a love interest. Because of the hollowness of it all the ending loses any power. On the bright side though Djimon Hounsou makes an appearance, but sadly it’s in the last act, and even his character is awkwardly put in there. This movie sort of comes off as Transformer’s before the Transformer’s franchise hit.
I will say though that I did like the stunts. While their placement was weird, and there were some that had me going, “c’mon man,” they were for the most part fun ideas that gave the film some level of excitement that it lacks from its plot and character development.
The 4K aspect was also actually good and did make the film a better watch. This statement though brings me to a new thought. The ultimate thing I’ve noticed with the 4K push and remasters is that it can give you chance to catch up on movies you had forgotten about that were good, but what about the ones that you forgot about, and they were bad? It doesn’t seem to make sense to me at all. If all you want to get out of 4K movies is the nice visuals, and the ability to show off your new TV to your neighbors then sure the 4K remaster of this film Is fine. For me though 4K isn’t only about the visuals. Yes, I know the actual technical process is a visual thing but adding 4K should be about adding another layer of quality on top of something that would still be good with out it. It should be a tool that is used to take an already good thing to a new level not something that is the only selling point for a movie, which for this remaster it is. Ultimately when it comes down to it I can’t see a reason for someone to add this film to their 4K collection because despite the nice visuals it still falls short on so many other levels and there are much better films that will give you a good story and let you revel in the power of 4K.
