Venusberg | That's not your heart, it's a piece of helicopter casing

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

There was an element of compulsion in my attendance at Lara Croft - Tomb Raider last weekend. Essentially, my three laydee companions all wanted, in a bizarre twist of fate, to watch Angelina Jolie bounding around in a halter top, and I didn't. Still, outvoted as I was, along I went.

And? Well, if movies were free, and time was infinite, I would firmly recommend it, if only for Chris Barrie changing his name to "Christopher" in the credits to show a serious, Hollywood side. The film has the feel of something the writers of which started at one end and completed in a single sitting without looking back. So, vague ideas are thrown in to plug earlier gaps, the entire plot is provided by two encounters, one textual and one personal, with Lara's father, and so on. And speaking of the father, the choice of Jon Voigt here is a curious one. This is not the type of film that will attract an audience curious to see Voigt and Jolie playing father and daughter, but rather an audience with no idea of who Jon Voigt is.

Jolie is, in fact, a major problem. Not because she does not do her best with the non-script, or fails to convince within those limitations ("OK, Angelina, I want you to convey simmering sexual tension, the possibility of a former relationship, professional envy, and a sense that you could redeem him from his moneygrabbing ways because you see in him a spark of decency unrevealed in the course of the film. In ten words. Go!"), but because no matter how CGIed the breasts, no matter how wasp the waist, no matter how pouty the pouty, pouty lips, she can never be Lara Croft. Her attraction lies in her very artificiality. Check out something I wrote on a related topic here.

It's a glorious mess. The four set-piece action sequences are accelerated to the point of hallucination, interspersed with scenes in which perfectly competent actors chew their way through largely impossible dialogue. There is no memorable dialogue, no rounded characterisations. In fact, this film may be a philosophical triumph for democracy, as it develops every single character exactly equally. Everybody gets one trait, regardless of how much screen time they have. Nobody has too much screen time. Occasionally, one wonders why a character is there at all. Why? Because it's his democratic right, darn it.

Seen in those terms, the film ceases to be a not-particularly good action film, and becomes instead an actively unsuccessful art movie. The problem is, nothing in this film has any affect. The characters are at best ciphers, at worst not even plot devices, and impossible to get up any enthusiasm for at all. Every scene seems modular, strung along a paper-thin premise. Half-arsed mysticism is dragged in without explanation or expansion as McGuffin or pure irrelevance. The set design and scenery are at times impressive but criminally underused. Because puzzle-solving is not something one can easily show in an exciting and dynamic fashion onscreen, Croft deciphers the riddles set in her path apparently by instinct, striding through the ingenuity of the ancients on her way to the next fist- or gunfight.

This is not a film; it is a support system for a few hyperkinetic, adrenaline-soaked action sequences. Like the Matrix, but more so, and without any strong performances, any strong characters or, to judge it by its own terms, enough action. Quite fun. Not enough fun to justify a tenner.

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