The new Tomb Raider is out. I will start with the non-spoiler review. The movie is alright. It’s not innovative, it’s not unique, but it’s fun. The start is a touch slow and confusing, by which I mean that it is really weird. But, that’s ok, since the movie picks itself up from its own mess and delivers a fun experience. The casting is spot on. Lara looks like she could actually do what the character does, the villain is a good counterpart to her and everyone else is unremarkable enough to not distract from the main characters. The cinematography is great, as almost every frame of the movie is beautiful. The story… well… the story has issues. It essentially consists of two parts, the original one and the copy of an Indiana Jones movie. The original part is a mess and the copy is, well, a copy. But it’s a good copy, so it somehow evens it out. On the plus side, the action sequences are absolutely great.
I give it 6.12 / 10, it was okay. (9 / 10 in movies based on game genre)

Spoiler Alert

Now, to the entertaining part, the spoiler-filled analysis. There are two points of the story I want to talk about. First, the start of the movie.

The start of the movie a huge pile of horseshit. Lara is an heir to a massive corporation, making her effectively a billionaire. But that doesn’t sound very relatable, does it? So, she is poor, works as a delivery girl and is haunted by the memories of her father for extra +2 sympathy points! Seriously, this is so much bullshit – she doesn’t want to accept her heritage because she doesn’t want to sign off her father as dead. Now consider this, your father is missing for years, you have two options:

A) Accept your heritage and you your billions of dollars to search for him
B) Ignore point A and live in poverty as a delivery girl

Lara chooses A. Don’t ask me why… I still don’t get it. The second thing I want to point out from the start is that the movie starts with an exposition video, which plays no role in the first fifteen minutes of the movie and then it gets repeated (!!!) just before it would become meaningful. Seriously? Most people hate exposition, why did they put it there twice?

Anyway, on to the second thing – the place on the waterfall scene. That was an action scene so incredible that it deserves its own spot. I mean, holy shit, was that one awesome? What makes it unique is that it doesn’t have an enemy, an antagonist. Lara is simply trying to survive her own escape and the scene has incredible tension, because it’s unclear how it can go, as the environment has no objective. It doesn’t try to capture her, it doesn’t try to kill her, it doesn’t care where she ends up, it just is and that makes the scene the most intense action scene of the whole movie.