Croft: Must-See
By Iam Sam I am
Staff Writer

I was very pleased to see last week that The Collage had undertaken a bold and daring move: they published a positive review of a movie that will be an excellent one but would not be liked by many college students because they think that they are too sophisticated. That movie is Timeline, which the review calls “an adventure filled with romance, action, and suspense.” If that is what you are looking for in a movie (and who is not?) then there are many other great movies that get overlooked by college newspapers because they are not “clever” enough, or because they are “tiresome,” “cynical,” “predictable,” or “mediocre.”

I would like to stand by The Collage in trumpeting these fine offerings. There were many big action films released last summer that I bet you didn’t see. You might not have seen them because they seemed like they would be “repellently commercial.” But, there were many hidden masterpieces, like Timeline is sure to be. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life is just one such film, and I would like to urge people to see it when it comes out on DVD, because it is so interesting.

Raider, based on the very popular video game, asks an intriguing question: how far are you willing to go for your love of adventure? Lara Croft, the swashbuckling archeologist, has to face this question herself at many points throughout her adventures. Like: can she do the right thing and shoot her evil boyfriend in the anti-gravity cave? Or: is she brave enough to face the ravenous tree-beasts that guard the Cradle of Life?

These and many other important moral questions get brought up in Raider, which did not deserve to do as badly at the box office as it did. It was obviously the product of a serious investment of time and effort. Much historical research was done on tombs, indigenous tribes, and authentic foreign locations such as Greece and Africa. This research lends the whole movie an exciting feeling. It is like learning about history, while you are also seeing very suspenseful things happening.

The plot is basically this. Lara Croft is a sassy and very sophisticated English woman who is proficient at raiding tombs. She is called upon by her government to stop a villain from uncovering the Cradle of Life, which would allow him to release great death upon the world. At first she is reluctant, but soon she finds that it is pretty thrilling to raid tombs and that she likes to do this with her military ex-boyfriend. He is sort of a puzzle: you never know if he is good or bad until the end, when it turns out he is bad. This makes the movie suspenseful; you do not know what will happen next, because it is so mysterious.

Throughout Raider, authentic details make the story interesting. Like the underwater palace that Lara discovers in the Mediterranean Sea at the beginning—it is thought that many such palaces and ruins may have sunk beneath the sea in early historical times. Or the room full of Chinese warrior statues that sets the stage for Lara’s fight with a Crime Boss. Such statues really were made by Chinese rulers. Or the secret volcano sanctuary where the Cradle of Life hides, and the helpful tribes who help her find it. Many similar tribes and volcanoes are to be found in Africa and other continents.

Throughout all of this serious adventuring, though, there is time for comic relief. Lara has some funny English sidekicks, who are pretty good with technology and espionage but not very good with guns. This makes things very tense but also funny when the sidekicks have to deal with guns, because they don’t do that very well.

Raider is the product of an impressive group of creative individuals. Its writers have worked on such pictures as Muppet Treasure Island and Judge Dredd, which means that they brought an eclectic and diverse pool of screenwriting talent into the process of creating this movie.

The score, which is carefully designed in the tradition of other famous action movies, was written by Alan Silvestri, who worked on The Mexican..

And of course, who could forget the sultry Angelina Jolie? She really makes you believe that she is an intrepid international raider of gravesites in the tradition of Indiana Jones, but just happens to be female.

In the end, it is not the thrilling action or the heart-pumping adventure that make this the best movie from last summer. It is the resourcefulness and plucky know-how of the heroine.

Everyone already knew from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that Lara was a force to be reckoned with, but it is her sense of humor and good-heartedness that make her a role-model in the sequel.

We know that Ms. Croft has grown as a person when she figures out that she cannot take the Cradle of Life from its black bubbling acid bath, and we know that she is really serious about her mission when she is willing to shoot the evil boyfriend.

He did not have moral courage, because he was very materialistic and only wanted money, but Lara knows that there is more to life than just getting artifacts. You have to be willing to sacrifice things sometimes, and that is the lesson that she has learned in the gravity-cave.

In conclusion, this is a very good movie that you should see when it comes out on DVD because it was not seen enough in the theaters. Any fans of action movies, archeology, or video-game-to-movie adaptations will not be disappointed.