Tomb Raider. (12A.)
Directed by Roar Uthaug.
Starring Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristin Scott Thomas and Dominic West. 118 mins.
Strange career paths the movie actors have: you prove yourself to be excellent employees and then get promoted to do rubbish. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, who recently married, have both blazed paths of steady excellence through a series of challenging roles, eventually being deemed worthy of shots at action movie star status. To each was presented an adaptation of a successful video game. At the end of 2016 Fassbender got to flounder in Assassin's Creed and now Vikander fails to fill the boots of Lara Croft.
This week on the Twitter, that giant teacup of self-brewing storms, some wretched user railed against her casting on account of her being insufficiently busty. He, of course, was immediately Tolerance Slapped by the masses for his sexism but the casting of the waif-like Vikander may be at the root of the film's failings: the decision to replace Lara Croft the fantasy figure, with Lara Croft the real person.
When we meet her this Lara Croft is making ends meet being a cycle courier around Brick Lane and not paying her dues at the boxing club. She is heir to her father's fortune but even though he has been missing for 7 years, she refuses to have him declared dead and get his money. Which is honourable, but posh girl slumming it in the East End is not really an ingratiating introduction to your lead character.
A better reason to criticise the casting of Vikander perhaps is that it is another example of upper-class actors getting all the best roles. Yes, I know Croft is supposed to be well bred, but the Swedish Vikander is so frightfully well spoken that she can do a scene with both Kristen Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi and make it look like they are the ones who are minding their Ps and Qs. They have swapped one female fantasy for another. Instead of the busty caricature that appeals to the nerds and plebs, she is the ultimate middle-aged, middle-class fantasy figure, both sides of The Good Life rolled into one: posher than Margo and cuter than Felicity Kendall.
Soon enough she's off to Hong Kong to follow in her father's footsteps and sail to a remote Japanese island, where he was looking for the tomb of an old Japanese queen rumoured to have the power of life and death. The plot is inspired by the latest, 2013, version of the game which rebooted the origins of the character (as well de-curving her physically.) So this is a vulnerable, identifiable Croft learning how to be the hero, far from invincible and suffering the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hunting. And she suffers, you really feel her pain – the film is punctuated by her yelps and urghs. Watching her stumble and fall around the remote jungle island she resembles a cast member from Made In Chelsea struggling through a particularly tough Bushtucker trial on I'm A Celebrity.
The equation the film makes is that quality actors and proper performances will make up for an action movie that was counting the pennies during its production. It does look very small scale and there are repeated shots of Walton Goggins, as the villain, looking up in awe at sights off screen that turn out to be less than awesome once revealed. You are supposed to think of Raiders of The Lost Ark, but mostly you are reminded of the innumerable cheap B-movies that inspired it, or were inspired by it. All those interminable tales of jungle exploring and disappearing into underground caverns.
The movie is too low rent to support the angst and depth the cast want to give it. The look of shock on Vikander's face when she kills someone for the first time is extremely powerful. It would've been very appropriate in The Revenant but is kind of indecent in a film which is like a modern Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan flick.
Directed by Roar Uthaug.
Starring Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Kristin Scott Thomas and Dominic West. 118 mins.
Strange career paths the movie actors have: you prove yourself to be excellent employees and then get promoted to do rubbish. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, who recently married, have both blazed paths of steady excellence through a series of challenging roles, eventually being deemed worthy of shots at action movie star status. To each was presented an adaptation of a successful video game. At the end of 2016 Fassbender got to flounder in Assassin's Creed and now Vikander fails to fill the boots of Lara Croft.
This week on the Twitter, that giant teacup of self-brewing storms, some wretched user railed against her casting on account of her being insufficiently busty. He, of course, was immediately Tolerance Slapped by the masses for his sexism but the casting of the waif-like Vikander may be at the root of the film's failings: the decision to replace Lara Croft the fantasy figure, with Lara Croft the real person.
When we meet her this Lara Croft is making ends meet being a cycle courier around Brick Lane and not paying her dues at the boxing club. She is heir to her father's fortune but even though he has been missing for 7 years, she refuses to have him declared dead and get his money. Which is honourable, but posh girl slumming it in the East End is not really an ingratiating introduction to your lead character.
A better reason to criticise the casting of Vikander perhaps is that it is another example of upper-class actors getting all the best roles. Yes, I know Croft is supposed to be well bred, but the Swedish Vikander is so frightfully well spoken that she can do a scene with both Kristen Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi and make it look like they are the ones who are minding their Ps and Qs. They have swapped one female fantasy for another. Instead of the busty caricature that appeals to the nerds and plebs, she is the ultimate middle-aged, middle-class fantasy figure, both sides of The Good Life rolled into one: posher than Margo and cuter than Felicity Kendall.
Soon enough she's off to Hong Kong to follow in her father's footsteps and sail to a remote Japanese island, where he was looking for the tomb of an old Japanese queen rumoured to have the power of life and death. The plot is inspired by the latest, 2013, version of the game which rebooted the origins of the character (as well de-curving her physically.) So this is a vulnerable, identifiable Croft learning how to be the hero, far from invincible and suffering the various slings and arrows of outrageous fortune hunting. And she suffers, you really feel her pain – the film is punctuated by her yelps and urghs. Watching her stumble and fall around the remote jungle island she resembles a cast member from Made In Chelsea struggling through a particularly tough Bushtucker trial on I'm A Celebrity.
The equation the film makes is that quality actors and proper performances will make up for an action movie that was counting the pennies during its production. It does look very small scale and there are repeated shots of Walton Goggins, as the villain, looking up in awe at sights off screen that turn out to be less than awesome once revealed. You are supposed to think of Raiders of The Lost Ark, but mostly you are reminded of the innumerable cheap B-movies that inspired it, or were inspired by it. All those interminable tales of jungle exploring and disappearing into underground caverns.
The movie is too low rent to support the angst and depth the cast want to give it. The look of shock on Vikander's face when she kills someone for the first time is extremely powerful. It would've been very appropriate in The Revenant but is kind of indecent in a film which is like a modern Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan flick.
