A Jolie good show

A FEW years back, when the whole Lara Croft thing took off, video gamers all over the world had a real dilemma. Here was a computer-animated character so beautiful, so alluring and so damned sexy that, when they played the game, they weren’t sure which joystick to use. For me, this merely proved a long-held opinion — that people who played video games should get out more and experience the real world. Things took on a more sinister edge when my wife ended up doing the styling and costume for the “real-life”, public appearance version of Lara Croft, and would regale me with horror stories of spotty computer freaks at gaming exhibitions.

Apparently they would just stand, glazed over, their hands moving suspiciously in their pockets, staring at the incarnation of their heroine. God knows what they were thinking and by all accounts security had to be on their toes. With all this in mind, I could have been forgiven for not really looking forward to the second Lara Croft movie — especially when I hadn’t even seen the first. Not for the first time in my life, I was to be proved wrong.

So, so wrong.

And it’s all down to Angelina Jolie, who has a screen presence like no other actress around today. Seriously, the moment I saw her looking like she’d been poured into a silver wetsuit, I was hooked. And things just got better. A few highlights. Lara taking a conference call on her earpiece while riding a black stallion, blasting the s*** out of targets with a pump-action shotgun and clad in leather coat and jodhpurs. Lara ignoring the clamours of inmates as she strides along the landing of an Eastern European jail, clad in a white fur coat. Lara surveying an array of weapons, casually playing with a butterfly knife while issuing orders down a phone. When asked what she is doing, she replies in the perfect cut-glass accent of an English private girls’ school: “Accessorising.”

The plot, if you’re interested — and frankly I wasn’t — involves Lara saving the world from a mad scientist (Ciarán Hinds), who steals a supernatural orb. Croft teams up with ex-agent Terry Sheridan (Gerard Butler) and their trip to track down the elusive doctor takes them to Hong Kong, Tanzania, Greece and The Great Wall Of China. Along the way they find time for a bit of love and plenty of action. There are some great stunts (especially the leap from Hong Kong’s International Financial Centre) and the movie cracks along at a fairly wicked pace. Everyone and everything, though, plays second fiddle to Angelina Jolie. I can’t remember the last time I saw a film so dominated by the extraordinary beauty and screen presence of the lead actress. See it for her alone.

news source : http://themoderatevoice.com/