Tomb Raider The Cradle of Life

Paramount Pictures presents a Mutual Film Company production

Starring: Angelina Jolie Gernard Butler and Noah Taylor

Directed by: Jan De Bont

Rating:**1/2

Plot: Lara Croft is back and she found an orb in which becomes a map to the CRADLE OF LIFE which some crazy bad guy wants to destroy the world with for really no reason. Angelina Jolie shows off her body and really boring action sequences ensue.

Acting: I really like Angelina Jolie I love most of the movies she's been in I mean she has an Academy Award. She also is Lara Croft I have played the games and she is that character she is perfect. It is very sad that no one seemingly can make her a script for this character. She has a grace and style that I love and she is the only woman I believe can be a bad ass and get away with it. Besides her the rest of the cast I can't even remember very well. In the movie Croft hires an ex-lover of hers to help her find these Chinese gangsters which stole this orb/map from her. He is okay but doesn't really stand out. The bad guy I don't remember the character name or the actor but he can over act like a god. His character is seriously not memorable at all. All I remember is one minute he wants Croft dead and then a second later he wants her alive again. Pointless I would rather have Mr. T as a bad guy or something jesus.

Directing/Writing: Other reviews have posted lines like this is better than the first one. That is true it is better than the first one. Mind you the first one had no plot and really no good action, so basically this movie could have been thirty minutes long of Jolie in a bathing suit dancing with a monkey and it could have been better. I just don't understand where they are making their mistakes. It seems easy enough to make this into a good movie series but I guess I am dead wrong. This movie has no style its all over the place with a lot of Panasonic commercials everywhere. I get really annoyed when movies do this. Like it felt like every major scene they would do a close up of a Panasonic device. I hate Panasonic now!!! The action was boring too I mean most of the action is pointless, riding a horse shooting targets and riding motorcycles off of the Great Wall of China. Then nothing happens after that, no bad guys, no nothing. Only maybe two good action scenes in the entire movie. Actually three if you count the kick ass jet ski part at the beggining. There we go another thing that pissed me off was the start of this movie, an earth quake rocks Greece it seems and they never even go back to it happening, at least I don't think they did, but who cares. Another horrible scene in which Croft is swimming and a shark comes by and this was great, the shark was screaming. Screaming? I hated Finding Nemo but at least they kept things in tact. I was laughing so hard watching this scene. Croft after finding the shark cuts herself to attract it, when the shark comes over... SHE PUNCHES IT!!! It was great one of the best things I have ever seen on a movie screen, she punches it and then grabs the shark and they swim away. This scene set up all disapointment through the rest of the movie.

Overall: I wanted this movie to kick ass even though the trailers made me feel funny about it. I was hoping for something cool to make up for last time. But ph well I feel bad for Jolie who has to have this on her resume. I hope a third is made with Tim Burton or somebody directing it so they can make it R and it make it a crazy action movie with a kick ass woman in the lead. Also I hate whenever a movie is set in Africa every village person there is really nice, I want cannibal villagers, that would have made this movie the best movie of the summer. I should write the third and call it Cradle of Cannibals, now that kicks ass.