Lara Croft : Tomb Raider - Cradle of life

Year of release : 2003

Run time : 1h57m

Genre : Action / Fantasy / Adventure

Cast : Angelina Jolie, Gerard Butler, Ciaran Hinds, Djimon Hounsou

Directed by Jan de Bont, the movie is based on the Lara Croft : Tomb Raider video-game series first published in 1996.It is the sequel to the 2001 Lara Croft Tomb Raider movie.

At a wedding in Greece, an earthquake takes place after they play rock music, unravelling something Lara thinks to be the Luna Temple. Lara and her team from Greece think it was built by Alexander the Great, to keep his treasures.

As she prepares to go under with 2 of her Greek team members, as the temple is submerged, the father of the 2 men tells Lara he finds it odd Alexander didn’t mention anywhere this temple, and that God also wiped it off the face of the earth with a volcano, suggesting maybe it’s not meant to be found. Lara takes it as a challenge.

She dives to the bottom of the sea with the two men, and finds the temple. Once they reach it, inside, there’s no water, and they can walk and breathe. They find many treasures that the men start putting in bags. Lara looks around, and finds a glowing orb when she takes a medallion piece off a statue.

At the same time, a highly trained team belonging to the Lo brothers, of the crime syndicate in China, k1ll the 2 brothers, wounding Lara, and take the orb.

Lara barely makes it out of there, as she wounds herself, attracting a shark on purpose, to get her to the surface. On the surface she sends a signal to her trusted team in London, and they find her after 3 days.

Back in London, Lara is asking her team to look for anything about an orb, trying to find out what it is. While she trains, the MI6 are visiting her with information about the men who k1lled her Greek team and wounded her. They also tell her a scientist who won the Nobel prize is now trading biological weapons on the black market to the highest bidder.

Lara realizes the scientist wants to use the orb to find Pandora’s Box, as it’s a map that leads to it. Lara tells the MI6 agents Pandora’s Box is actually the box which brought life to earth, and it’s in a place a pharaoh named “the cradle of life”. She says all that’s left inside the box now is the anti-life (the creation’s companion, as all in nature has balance, like the Yin and Yang,right and wrong), a plague that can wipe life out.

When the MI6 tells her they’re gonna give her their best agents, Lara asks for Terry Sheridan, a former marine commander turned mercenary, and one of her ex boyfriends. She tells them he knows how to get into the Lo brothers’ crime syndicate, and they agree to get him out of a Siberian prison.

Terry agrees to help Lara, and they start by jumping out of the jet which self destructs so no traces will be left for the Lo brothers to find them in China.

This sets them on an adventure which has them jumping off ropes upside down, fly off buildings using wingsuits, jumping off planes with parachutes into moving cars, and walk on walls upside down, when finding Pandora’s Box.

I personally enjoyed the movie. It’s action packed, with amazing fighting scenes. You do have to suspend your disbelief, as at one point, Lara jumps onto a helicopter, and she held on with one hand, while putting a tracking device on it.

Lara is off again, trying to save the world from the bad guys. Her ex boyfriend, Terry, thinks highly of himself, as in, he thinks Lara still loves him, and that maybe he was the love of her life, although they were together for only 5 months.

The acting was good, although Angelina was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress.

I honestly didn’t like the soundtrack.

The visual effects were good.

The movie received mixed reviews from the critics (in between 24% and 43) and audiences (between 44% and 5.6) of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B-, while the IMBD audiences gave it a 5.5.

The movie grossed a little over 160 million dollars at the box office against a production budget of 95 million dollars.

Rating : Worth a watch !