Wolff rating: FAIR
Plot summary: Chick with guns and hotpants assaults burial places.
Biased, pithy comments: Who are these ancients that sit around building elaborate traps for the folks who come later. It's like they say, wow, let's cover our burial grounds with monstrously complicated machinery but live in pre-industrial squalor the rest of the time. I liked the first ``Tomb Raider'' game; it looked great on my Mac with my Voodoo graphics card, and my wife liked exploring ruins at her own pace, with only a few hints of real danger here and there. Alas, this movie is stupid. Although Jolie fits the part physically to a T, she's supported by a bunch of hateful sidekicks and, good gravy, her real-life father Voight. The best parts of the film are just a few sequences here and there where Jolie is performing some unlikely physical stunt in and around some ancient stone monuments; pretty much when people start talking it goes downhill. There's some elaborate business with a secret society and probably the world's least-motivated ending sequence (what's up with the spinning globes? How do they know that getting to the top matters?). I could complain about the editing or something, but, like, eh. Some people were entranced by Jolie, and although she has a lot of charisma, she can't carry an otherwise confusing, unbelievable movie. Skip.
Other Notes: The promotional material---Jolie dressed as the wasp-waisted, padded-bra, gun-toting gal with full lips; mm, I had more fun looking at that than I did watching the movie.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: 100min
Directed by: Simon West