But before Lara does, she’s presented with a photo of her and her dad, plus a skeleton key and a puzzle - she and her dad loved puzzles - which sends her to her father’s empty crypt, which sends her to his secret cluttered HQ for international derring-do, which sends her to Hong Kong, which sends her into perilous seas and to that Japanese island where who-knows-what awaits. Her aunt Kristin Scott Thomas bails Lara out of jail after a long and well-edited bike chase I won’t bother to detail and convinces her to sign the damn papers already. For some reason - maybe it’s a consequence of staring for so long at the smooth, dead-eyed faces of Don, Eric, Ivanka, and Jared - I found her ridiculous insistence on living by her wits and on her merits as worthy of a standing ovation.īut she is - there’s no escaping it - a rich girl and a Croft, and the Crofts have a lot of holdings and a neglected but vast manor on the outskirts of London. Lara drags herself off the canvas and we learn that she hasn’t paid her club dues - she’s poor, even though she could collect her father’s fortune but won’t because it would mean she’d have to acknowledge he’s dead instead of missing-and-presumed. That sounds complicated but plays very simply, and then it’s seven years later and Vikander’s Lara is getting herself smashed in a boxing-cum-wrestling ring by a larger opponent. The vastly wealthy Richard Croft (Dominic West) tells his journal (and us) that he must take leave of his beloved daughter - his “Sprout” - to keep a nefarious agency from finding and weaponizing a demonic queen entombed in a mountain on an island off the coast of Japan. It’s lickety-split, straight-ahead, with no dumb subplots. To the movie: Tomb Raider does everything right that last year’s The Mummy did so garishly, painfully wrong. Then she made the same speech about how she’s always loved Lara Croft that I’d already heard on talk shows, but not from ten feet away, where it’s even more charming. Then an announcer yammered something about the lighting being wrong and called for Alicia Vikander to help out - and so, in bounded Vikander, who amid the YAAAAHHHHHHHs hugged each Lara Croft in turn and posed for a group photo. A bunch of women did, affecting the requisite tough stances. I’ll admit that the screening started off on a feel-good promotional note: Attendees were invited to dress up as Lara Croft and pose in front of the movie’s poster. Are You Smart Enough to Solve the Only Puzzle in Tomb Raider?
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