Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (DVD, 2003, Widescreen)

The film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" generated quite a bit of revenue during the summer of 2001, so it seems to have made sense for Paramount and Mutual Film Company to create a sequel. However, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider--The Cradle of Life" underperformed at the box office, and everyone began blaming everyone else. The film companies blamed the videogame´s makers for making progressively worse game sequels, and the videogame´s makers blamed the film companies for making a bad movie. You know what? Everybody´s right, lol.
The truth of the matter is that there are few videogames that are incredible, life-influencing experiences. People usually play videogames to have some visceral, proxy fun engaging in activities that aren´t normally experience-able in real life (killing thousands of opponents with explosives, extreme street racing, etc.). That´s perfectly fine given the utility of videogames, but that sort of mentality doesn´t work with movies, which require some thought input from both makers and spectators in order to be involving. You see, with a videogame, all you have to do is put the gamer in the game, and that´s it. With a film, though, the movie has to draw the viewer´s attention with either a story or with ideas. "Tomb Raider 2" has a terrible story and no new ideas, and it does not have a fresh way of serving its terrible stories and lack of new ideas.
I could give you a plot rundown (what happens at a specific moment during the film´s running time), but nothing happens in the movie that would lend itself to a plot analysis. Therefore, all you need to know about the story is that Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) has to find Pandora´s Box before an evil scientist (Ciaran Hinds, "The Sum of All Fears") does in order to prevent him from unleashing a terrible plague. This gem of a concept is an excuse for characters to blast the crap out of each other with various guns, and we get to see Jolie doing a couple of nifty stunts. "Tomb Raider 2" is a better movie than its predecessor (mainly because the first entry was so poorly edited), but that´s not saying much. I know that my colleague John Puccio gave "TR1" a "5", but I would´ve given it a "4".
To be sure, everything looks great due to the filmmakers´ technical proficiency, but there is a serious lack of artistry. When the script doesn´t bother giving us reasons to care or root for its characters, then no excitement can be generated by even the most daring of stunts (regardless of whether they were performed by stuntpeople or created with computers). This is all the more painful because the movie offers several beautiful vistas, but there´s nothing that compels us to make emotional attachments to the beauty of the film´s locations. (By the way, I don´t know why they did it, but the filmmakers took a page from "Die Another Day"--the worst Brosnan Bond outing if not one of the worst Bond films ever--and often used the "slow-down-then-resume-no​rmal-film-speed" gimmick. It looks terrible.)
Finally, while Angelina Jolie has an athletic, sculpted body, her face doesn´t look like that of a "hero". I´ve always thought that her angry face would allow her to play a great villain, so I´m still waiting to see the "promise" and "talent" that some critics seem to find in her performances.

Angelina Jolie... portrayed Lara Croft, Tomb Raider in the Movies....

The Movie Is Based on a Videogame..... but there is also a series of Comic Books from Image Comics, and a few one-shots specials.

Angelina was born in 1975, and was cast in a few movies before her Tomb Raider breakout film in 2001 !

She portrayed Lara Croft, who is a member of a rich British aristocratic family. She enjoys collecting ancient artifacts from ruins of temples, tombs, cities, and other places worldwide, and goes through death-defying dangers to obtain them. She is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, and foreign languages and does them all in tight outfits as per the video game.

Angelina' looks definitely helped fill the tight outfits role, and being the daughter of actor Jon Voight gave her a good background in acting.

The movie made Angelina an international movie star, thus during the summer of 2003 the sequel, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, was released. After seeing her at the SDCC movies program I acquired more respect for her as she came across very well to her audience of over 6,000 in speaking and answering questions from her fans.

I enjoyed this movie as much as the first one! I would look forward to a third if one would be made??!!

Michael

we really enjoyed this movie, Angelina Jolie is the perfect woman action hero. The story line was real good and kept you intrested all the way through. All in all this is definitly worth having in ones collection.Bought this one because we already had the first Lara Croft and really liked it, Cradle of life was every bit as good or better.

Get this movie to watch Gerard Butler's screen test, or HIS acting. Angelina is emotionless throughout. The only time when her facial expression changed was after she shot Butler, at the end. The chase scenes, the stunt scenes, the fight scenes are difficult to follow, too long, unbelievable, dialogue is difficult to follow.

DONT GET THIS MOVIE FOR THE ACTING; this is not a movie for ACTING. Maybe not for action either as it is very confusing. BUT I GOT IT FOR THE BUTLER'S SCREEN TEST... SO I AM HAPPY!

Angelina is definitly Lara. She totally rocks in this movie. I love all the action. The story takes you into it, you can't wait to see what happens next. When she takes on the bad guys you are so rooting for her to get them. She seems to do things so effortlessly and with ease.