Fun sours in formulaic 'Tomb Raider'

Alicia Vikander takes over the role of Lara Croft in a movie that can't resist formula.

“Shoot him, Lara. We can’t let him get to Himiko.”
If this line of dialogue from Tomb Raider doesn’t arouse ripples of excitement for you, you may not be a candidate for the latest attempt to turn a video game into something more than an over-amped funhouse of formulaic plotting and so-so effects.

When the line was uttered by one of the movie's characters, I couldn’t help wishing that the Bill Murray of the Ghostbusters era were around to add a wry and preposterous comment. Murray would have known what to say about Himiko, a departed Japanese queen also known as the Mother of Death. Open her tomb and the entire world will be doomed.

The main suspense about this edition: Can Alicia Vikander replace Angela Jolie as Lara Croft, the intrepid tomb raider? Small in stature but buffed to the max, Vikander put me in mind of a gym-obsessed Tinkerbell who's motivated by a mixture of iron-willed determination, preternatural leaping ability and a growing commitment to combat evil.

Early on, I thought Tomb Raider — which has been directed by Roar Uthaug, the Norwegian filmmaker who brought us The Wave -- might be fun. And it is -- until the movie reaches the island where the notorious, 2000-year-old Himiko has been entombed.

The movie opens in the UK where Uthaug stages a nifty bike chase through the streets of East London. An independent spirit, Lara refuses to inherit the Croft fortune. She'd rather work as a bicycle courier.

Too bad Lara is stuck with the Croft heritage. Lara's father Richard Croft (Dominic West) left home to find the mythic tomb in the Pacific. Lara grew up with a mentor (Kristen Scott Thomas). Scott Thomas doesn't have much to do in this edition but she looks as if someone dipped her in white powder, denying her even rudimentary hints of a complexion.

It has been seven years since Richard launched his island adventure. He is presumed dead.

After a few plot manipulations, Lara -- not one to accept conventional wisdom -- decides to retrace her father's steps in hopes of finding dear old Dad alive on the island.

To achieve her goal, Lara travels to Hong Kong where she hooks up with Lu Ren (Daniel Wu), the son of the captain who guided Richard to the island where some terrible -- but as yet unknown -- evil might be unearthed.

After raging seas wreck Lu's small boat, Lara and Lu are stranded on the island where they're taken prisoner by Mathias Vogel (Walton Goggins), a slave-driver who claims to have killed Lara’s dad. Vogel has been searching for the tomb of Queen Himiko ever since. It's roughly at this point that the movie's fun begins to sour.

I’m not sure whether Tomb Raider can match the popularity of the 2001 edition of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider although it’s probably better than the 2003 sequel, Lara Croft, The Cradle of Life.

Tomb Raider leaves little doubt that it's meant to function as an origins story, setting up what the filmmakers clearly hope will be a healthy franchise life.

We’ll see about that: In the meantime, know that Tomb Raider pits Lara against fiendish foes, a storm-tossed sea, a towering waterfall and other dangers which confront her as the script by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons goes through genre motions that ultimately can’t totally mask the story’s hollow origins.

In short: Uthaug and Vikander can’t make good on the promise of vibrant early scenes. By the end, enjoyment has been overrun by formula -- at least it was by me.

A Norwegian helping of disaster

I don't know if I've said it in this context before, but those familiar with my movie tastes know that I'm a generally impartial fan of disaster movies.

Because I have many things about which I legitimately can worry, I never have spent much time trying to determine why I enjoy this particular brand of guilty pleasure.

I say only this, "Earthquake? Bring it on?" "Flash flood? I'm there." "Tornado? Well, why not?"

So it was with more than the usual anticipation that I watched The Wave, a Norwegian entry into the kind of wanton destruction only nature can deliver.

The first thing to know is that The Wave takes place far from any beach. The movie involves the separation of a massive chunk of rock from a cliff wall. This huge mass of rock and debris plunges into a fjord.

As a result, a 250-foot towering wall of water surges through the fjord, overwhelming the small town of Geiranger.

We've already had a serious tsunami movie (The Impossible). We don't need another, so director Roar Uthaug takes a different tack. He focuses on geologist Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), a dad who works at a mountain station that monitors seismic activity in the cliff wall.

Kristin seems to like his job, but he's about to give it up. He has taken a position with an oil company, which offers a higher salary and more stability in a less remote part of the country.

At the last minute before the move, Kristian decides not to take his two kids (Jonas Hoff Oftebro and Edith Haagenrud-Sande) to the city, but to stay in Geiranger until he can shake the feeling that big trouble looms.

Kristian's wife (Ane Dahl Torp) already had agreed to stay behind in order to complete her work at the town's hotel.

I don't suppose I need to tell you that all hell breaks loose, and that husband and wife, each with a different child in tow, are separated.

The actors are likable enough to create the level of concern this sort of picture requires; the effects are good; and director Uthaug creates some nail-biting tension, particularly in scenes staged in the depths of a mountain fissure.

And, yes, the CGI rendered wave that descends of the tiny town is convincing enough to inspire the expected response, something along the lines of "Oh, shit."

None of this is to say that Uthaug totally avoids the cliches that weaken every Hollywood disaster movie. There's the usual tension between commercial concerns and life-saving procedures -- albeit in a lower key than usual. Worse yet, the movie's slide of rock is accompanied by an equally dense cascade of improbabilities and an unfortunate, last-minute bow at the altar of uplift.

OK, so The Wave won't be anyone's perfect movie, and it's not nearly as morally ambiguous as Ruben Ostlund's Force Majeure, a Swedish film about a family torn apart by an avalanche.

But as a good, old-fashioned hunk of big-screen disaster, you could do a lot worse than The Wave, say last year's far more expensive and less involving San Andreas.