Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Y’know, this is the sort of summer where I have pretty much put all my expectations of what would be good and what would be bad on hold, because there have been some real head-scratchers released. The way this summer’s going, it wouldn’t surprise me if TOMB RAIDER 2 turned out to be a slick little action film that no one’s expecting, something that slips in under the radar.
After all, pretty much everyone was betting against T3 at the start of the summer, and look how that came out.
Anyway... got this one in the mail today:
Hey there,
Jemma McFatBack here - you've printed sneaky peaks at Red Dragon, 28 Days Later and the masterpiece that refuses to age, The Scorpion King. Well now I've seen Paramount's summer biggie and...
I went in with LOW expectations. Lower than any I can remember having for a movie. The trailer looked kinda fun but the first movie sucked in so many ways I couldn't begin to contemplate them salvaging something decent for the second outing. And Jan De Bont's not made anything worth watching since Speed, but that was one of the best action movies of the 90s, so...
It seems like he just went out to make his own movie, ignore Simon West's misfire - not that there was much to pick up on - and for the most part it's an entertaining ride. Whilst the opening sequence in an underwater temple just SCREAMS backlot, it does get better... but only after a couple of those useless training sequences that plagued the original. Sure, cuts from them may bulk out your trailer but there's no tension, no sense of danger or excitement, no wow factor, no reason for them to be there. Luckily, British Intelligence arrives and the plot gets going.
The whole Temple Of Life/Pandora's Box thing is handled far better than you'd expect from the trailer and whilst the bad-guy is rather silly, he's easy enough to hate. The main thing in the film's favor is Lara's relationship with her partner - insert Scottish guy's name here - because there's uncertainty to the whole thing. Not because they were lovers in the past and will they/won't they get together? But because his character - a disgraced marine - betrayed his men and country to sell a weapon to the highest bidder. And now Lara needs him to help her find a weapon... but will he betray her? It's nicely played and adds a sense of ACTUAL DRAMA to the proceedings. He's also reasonably sexy, which balances the strutting, nipple-erect performance from Jolie.
Meanwhile, some REAL action sequences have kicked into play - ones where, unlike the first movie, people actually get shot and die. And without wanting to sound like a gung-ho idiot, thank god for that... even in "these troubled times" it's still nice to see a bullet-riddled minion tumble squealing from an elevated position. This movie has that and, as soon as we know it's pushing PG-13 that little bit more than the prequel, there's a sense that someone we care for might get hurt. It helps.
There's some nice CGI where it's needed and either invisible or non-existant stuff where it's not (very pleasing), a Raiders-lite artifact-finding conclusion (which also seemed to rip from Labyrinth, which gets it a plus point in my book), at least one cool idea I'd not seen before with those growly things you see in the trailers, and very little of Chris Barrie, the guy from TV's Red Dwarf who irritated audiences worldwide in the first movie. Shame to see Djimon Hounsou reduced to this bit-player role.
To my surprise, then, Cradle Of Life seems to have learned that a decent action movie needs characters that hook you, at least slightly, for whatever reason, and a sense that the (mostly gun-orientated) action isn't just foreplay for a trailer-friendly stunt but actually potentially dangerous.
One point though (if only to prove to people that I've seen it once they have too)... if making an antidote really was THAT easy, I think we'd have a remarkably disease free world.
Jemma.
Hmmmm... guess I’ll have to wait to see what that means. I doubt I’ll see this one while I’m gone next week, so I’ll check it out when I’m back in LA on the 30th.
"Moriarty" out.
