This movie was a hot mess. There were many scenes that simply added nothing to the plot and many things that simply made no sense. 1 out of 5 stars.
So Lara's profession is a struggling bike messenger because she doesn't believe in herself or something? Or maybe she's refusing to take on the responsibility of her father's large company? And she didn't go to college because? Either way, the movie opens with her boxing, losing, talking to a friend, and it's never mentioned again. We later get some flashbacks of her doing archery as a kid. So apparently these scenes serve the purpose to show the audience that she's in really good shape and she can take a beating I guess.
Then we have a bike race scene where it's a modern version of fox hunting and she's the fox, ha...ha...!? Anyway, she gets arrested because it's illegal and she gets bailed out by some woman who runs her father's company. We finally get some backstory about Lara, her father, and now the movie is setting up the actual plot of the movie. By the way, the movie has a cold open with a male voice narrating about some ancient tomb. That entire dialogue is repeated again here. Why though? Also, we learn her father has been missing for seven years and she finds his hidden workshop with a video camera not plugged in that has enough battery power to still work?
Another pointless scene is Lara trading in her father's necklace at a pawn shop run by Nick Frost. So far the movie has been semi serious with little to no jokes or humor. Now, for no reason, this pawnbroker is supposed to be the comic relief? Also, her father owns a huge company. She couldn't borrow money from it/them?
So now that Lara has money from the pawnshop, she heads to some Asian country because she found an email/picture of a boat that her father used before he disappeared. She naively trusts the wrong person and gets her backpack stolen. We have another chase scene where she gets it back and inadvertently meets the son of the boat owner she was originally looking for. Now, the picture showed a boat and she found what appeared to be the same boat. If Lara's father and the boat owner's father disappeared with that boat 7 years ago, how is that boat still around?
It's now essentially an hour into the movie, and we're finally on the boat to find Lara's father or find the Mcguffin on the movie -- some demon queen's tomb because remember "Tomb" raider. The boat hits some rocks during a storm and both Lara and the boat owner are washed up on an island run by Walton Goggins and a band of mercenaries. Goggins character Vogel is on a mission to find the tomb and reveals that he killed her father and the boat owners father although he was lying about Lara's father. After she escapes, she finds her father semi crazy but brings him back to reality. He reveals that he can't let Vogel find the tomb as it would unless hell on earth and he's been secretly throwing him off the trail for years. Lara reveals she brought his research to the island and we have a very "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade" moment.
Somehow the mercenaries find Lara and her father, and Lara is forced to solve a puzzle to open the way into the tomb. Finally, something is happening in this movie and with 40 minutes left we finally get to see what has been set up since the beginning of the film - the actual tomb. So after a couple red shirt deaths and puzzle solving, they find the tomb and discover that this queen had a disease and isolated herself so others wouldn't get the disease. So when Vogel's men try to move her, one of them gets infected and the disease kills him within seconds. Lara's father gets infected battling an infected mercenary and decides to blow himself and the tomb up. Lara defeats Vogel in hand to hand combat and escapes with the help of the boat owner and others that have been trapped on the island who were forced into slavery by Vogel and his men.
Earlier, Vogel had called a helicopter to get off the island, so all the survivors pile in and leave I guess?! Lara returns home to finally sign the paperwork that she owns the company and gives power of attorney to the woman that bailed her out earlier. She then realizes too late that Vogel's employer was a subsidary of her father's company therefore Vogel was working for the woman that she just gave power of attorney to. So Lara, who has been praised as the smart Croft the entire film is not smart at all.
Then for no reason we get the final pointless scene of Lara revisiting the pawn shop, getting her necklace back and buying her iconic guns that she uses and the movie ends.
