Viewers are seeing Tomb Raider with a fresh pair of eyes.

Many will be wary of seeing the new “Tomb Raider” because of the murmurings of mediocrity on the internet; but I for one, found very little fault in it.

This is a prequel to the previous two Lara Croft movies featuring Angelina Jolie, Tomb Raider from 2001 and Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life from 2003.

This new version directed by Norwegian Roar Uthaug, stars Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft and more closely resembles the video game. Other cast members include Dominic West, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu and Kristen Scott Thomas.

I must preface this by saying that I have not seen the versions with Angelina Jolie and I have had nothing to compare it to.

The movie starts in modern day London, and then transitions its setting to busy, bustling Hong Kong.

Trying to cope with the disappearance of her father, Lara tries to get on with her life, solo and working several odd jobs. Suddenly, she is thrown into the task of running her father’s company in his absence. She discovers his workshop as well as his entire life’s work, and in turn decides to go on a journey to find out the truth about the mysterious Himeko, the work that her father was trying to accomplish and how far along he got before his untimely death.

Lara then journeys to Hong Kong, in search of the sea captain that helped her father and also disappeared along with him. She goes on a wild goose chase with her recruited sea captain, Lu Ren to Yamatai, an ancient Japanese country, chasing her father’s unfinished quest.

As far as origin stories go, Tomb Raider was interesting enough to carry its own and really painted the picture of a young, rather inexperienced Lara. Some of her mistakes are forgivable because of her obvious naïveté. You root for her though, or at least I did. She makes many rookie hiccups, but they are believable because she is just learning how to be an archaeologist/tomb raider/adventurer.

One of the things that I liked about the film was execution of the scenes. The pacing was quite good and no one sequence was less action-packed then the next. It really kept the audience on their toes, as Lara put herself in more than a handful of near-impossible to escape scenarios and came out on top.

I am partial to movies similar to this because I think the heroine archetype is compelling as well as rare. Alicia is badass as young Lara.

One thing that could have been better is how stereotypically the antagonists acted. I could have used a little more complexity and less time mustache twirling. Their motives were clear but I think they could have done a little more with it than just demonizing big corporations.

I was hoping that the story arc between Lara and Lu Ren, the sea captain would go somewhere, seeing as though they had quite good chemistry, but I understand why a side love story would have been distracting and illogical. I suppose that Lara with a love life is too much to ask for.

I was hoping that the story arc between Lara and Lu Ren, the sea captain would go somewhere, seeing as though they had quite good chemistry, but I understand why a side love story would have been distracting and illogical. I suppose that Lara with a love life is too much to ask for.