Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I don't know why the ratings for Jolies Tomb Raider movies are so low. The story may be a bit cheesy but so were the games. Angelina's performance as Lara is perfect. Love rewatching this from time to time. Fun movie. I think after the new adaption 2018 tomb raider movie maybe gamers and fans of Lara will appreciate Jolies Tomb Raider a lot more.

Good performances from a number of very talented supporting actors, and an excellent portrayal of Lara Croft by Angelina Jolie cannot save this movie from incompetent filmmaking.Maybe there was once logically and tonally coherent vision for what this film was to be, but what ended up in theaters was a total mess.The ridiculous plot is not the problem, in fact the story is good precisely because it is so over the top and just "out there". It provides a lot of interesting locations and original scenes.Which don't, you know, actually add up to anything fun or memorable because the editing is so terrible.It's telling that the only scene where the stakes feel high is the opening action sequence which is revealed to just be Lara's elaborate training room. The "fake" training room feels more dangerous (and cool! and memorable!) than anything in the rest of the movie which is supposed to be "real". Yeah.The editing is bad. As in "worst I've ever seen" terrible. At a storyboarding level, key establishing shots, connecting shots, reaction shots etc. are missing. The dramatic pacing is completely off, narrative foreshadowing/callbacks are MIA, otherwise good fight scenes mishandled. Characters do inexplicable things. Events happen for no reason. There are a few great visual scenes, and some good framing and composition, and some nice stunt work, but it never joins up into sometime worth your time.

I'll be honest with you here, I hadn't even heard of Angelina Jolie until my brother gave me his copy of this DVD having abandoned it during some of the early scenes.By this time I was already playing and enjoying the early games - notably TR II before I played the original and progressed to TR III in that order.TR II was a masterpiece in terms of gaming. It was vibrant and diverse, covering many locations - most notably Venice and China, locations that were covered in the two Jolie movies combined to my recollection, among others.In order to play the heroine, Jolie had to gain muscle and play the games - in essence she had to BECOME Lara Croft. She had to absorb the quirky traits of this steadfast character in order to deliver an accurate portrayal to fans of the games ("Raiders" as we call ourselves). Jolie performed many of her own stunts to her credit and was on a high protein diet in order to bulk up to the athletic standard required.The only thing that lets this movie down is arguably the dialogue in spite of a very touching scene between Jolie and Voight - her then real- life estranged father. It was the pain of their real-life situation that oozed through the screen with a sense of great sadness. Jolie's accent was flawless but I feel the dialogue could have been less twee in parts.The reason my older brother abandoned the movie was due to a rather reality-suspending scene of an ambush in Croft Manor. Character Lara was engaged in some form of indoor bungee exercise wearing some sort of satin pyjama set yet, initially unarmed, managed to single-handedly take out an entire SWAT team with her cunning and athletic prowess, only managing to tool-up when she snatches a weapon from one of her bungee- captives.If you are happy to suspend belief then your kids will enjoy it. The sequel is more Bond-like however and a more believable movie. Nice to see a younger Daniel Craig in this debut TR film though!

Video game adventuress Lara Croft comes to life in a movie where she races against time and villains to recover powerful ancient artifacts. Lara Croft Tomb Raider is easily one of the most underrated Video- game movies ever made it's stylish, sexy and action packed and Angelina Jolie is the perfect Lara she owns the part and every time she goes against some ancient statue that comes alive or even the very first scene with the robot were really cool it's for sure cheesy and over the top at times but unlike other based on video game movies this is one that for around 80% of it it's based upon the game and that's what i appreciated about it also having Jon Voight and Angelina in the same movie talking to each other was something that really worked because father and daughter have a really good chemistry, Iain Glen as the villain is something that seems to work each time since he was also in Resident Evil 2 and 3 and he is going to reprise his role in the upcoming 6th and final installment and last but not least Daniel Craig 007 is in this film too and he has an American accent and he was pretty good too. To be honest this is a pretty cool action packed movie and it deserves more respect than hate.