Paramount’s tagline sold the fantasy; the film itself is padding and a countdown clock.

“Born into Wealth. Groomed by the Elite. Trained for Combat.” That is the tagline Paramount sold for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and it is the most honest thing about the film. Everything else is a padded bra and a countdown clock.

Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.

Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft

Angelina Jolie is the reason to watch. She plays the orphaned English aristocrat and archaeologist with a physical confidence the script never earns, and she is the only performer on screen who seems to know what movie she is in. The casting drew complaints from fans of the Core Design games, some of them about an American actress taking a British part, others about her tattoos. Director Simon West waved all of it off: “it was always Angelina. I mean, Lara sleeps with knives and doesn’t take shit from anybody.”

He was right about the fit. He was wrong that it was enough.

A Clock, a Triangle, and 5,000 Years

The plot is a fetch quest. Lara defeats a robot in an Egyptian tomb, which turns out to be a training arena in her family manor. Then a planetary alignment begins — the first in 5,000 years — and the Illuminati need a key to rejoin the two halves of the Triangle of Light, an artifact that controls time. A solar eclipse marks the deadline.

Lara finds a strange clock hidden in the manor. Commandos steal it. A letter from her missing father, Lord Richard Croft, explains the rest: one half of the Triangle sits in a tomb at Angkor, Cambodia, the other at the Ukok Plateau in Siberia. Find both. Destroy both. Beat the Illuminati to it.

That is a premise, not a story. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider moves between set pieces without ever explaining why anyone in them cares.

Daniel Craig and the Wasted Supporting Cast

The supporting cast is a list of people the film does not use. Daniel Craig plays Alex West, an American adventurer and rival who solves part of the temple puzzle; he is given nothing to do with it. Iain Glen plays Manfred Powell, the Illuminati front man who claims not to recognize photographs of the clock, then sends armed men to take it. Jon Voight plays Lord Richard Croft, who appears in a dream and in a letter. Noah Taylor plays Bryce, the technical assistant. Chris Barrie plays Hillary, the butler.

Five writers are credited — Patrick Massett, John Zinman, Sara B. Cooper, Mike Werb and Michael Colleary — and the seams show. Paramount bought the rights in 1998, aimed for a 2000 release, and cycled through scripts instead. Filming ran in Cambodia and England from July to November 2000. The delays bought nothing.

What Eidos Did to Lara

Eidos Interactive, which owned the franchise, pushed to scale down Lara’s sex appeal, partly to protect a PG-13 rating. Jolie wore a padded bra anyway. She explained the math to NY Rock in June 2001:

“I’m a 36C. Lara, she’s a 36D. And in the game, she’s a double D, so we took her down some.”

That is the film’s whole approach to its own source material in one quote. Take it down some. Not reimagine it, not commit to it — sand the edges until it rates.

The Release, the Money, the Sequel

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider opened in the United States and Canada on June 15, 2001, to generally negative reviews. Critics hit the plot and the action sequences; Jolie escaped the worst of it. The film grossed $274.7 million worldwide and ranks among the highest-grossing video game adaptations. A sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, followed in 2003 with Jolie back in the role.

Here is the order of what actually mattered:

1. Jolie’s performance — the only element that survived the decade.
2. The $274.7 million — proof that a game logo sells tickets regardless of quality.
3. The Eidos intervention — the moment the film chose merchandise over movie.
4. The five screenwriters — the reason the plot never coheres.
5. The 2003 sequel — the industry’s answer to all of the above.

A Franchise That Learned the Wrong Lesson

The commercial math is the interesting part. A film this thin, this choppy, this indifferent to its own mythology still cleared $274.7 million, and that number taught Hollywood the wrong thing for years: that the audience for a video game adaptation wants the silhouette and the title card, not a story. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is not a disaster because it failed. It is a disappointment because it succeeded at the wrong job.

Below is the running order the film actually follows.

Angelina Jolie deserved a better Lara Croft. So did the games. What the film delivers is a tagline, a padded bra, and a countdown clock that never once makes you feel the time running out.

2001 film · Angelina Jolie · Lara Croft · movie review · Tomb Raider · video game movie