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3/10
embarrassing rubbish that can't even spoof itself
21 August 2004
if you have nothing to do, and you have tidied your room and phoned your mum, put up shelves and watched paint dry, well maybe this film is for you. But.... beware....... this is a film where the contest is between a wooden script and actors who cant decide how much they are expected to be hamming it up badly for laughs. Is the cgi deliberately rough-draft quality or did they just forget to render it later on.

Lots of eye candy if you like your men hairy and well toned. Laura Croft slides yet again tho from all-action killer-babe in boots and dual guns to barbie does relic hunter.

In fact thats not fair to Relic Hunter. At least they have a vaguely plausible plot. Well - in comparison to this.

The prob with Laura Croft partI was they made an excellent Tomb Raider-does-real-action and then savaged the 2nd half in the editing suite. The prob with partII is that they made an embarrassing slapstick version of Tomb Raider and used an pair of pinking shears for editing.

Saying all that, Gerald Butler does a good job within the limits of an appalling script; the geek boys and the Greek brothers all work hard at squeezing something out of what little they offered. And Angelina Jolie plays her role well.

If only the studio had had the courage to go proper satire, spoof or even plain comedy. But from the mandrills to the skydiving, this was waste of a lot of movie money, some good actors and a lot of potential.

On the other hand, with all the cuttings from part 1 & 2, they must have enough to string together a whole third film with no need to reshoot anything.

Maybe one day EIDOS will vet enough pre-production rushes, scripts and cinematography and give us something that matches the addictive pleasure of their game. But on this form... don't hold your breath
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9/10
understated beautiful contemplative
20 August 2004
a film of about the cycles of life, about solitude and love, innocence, corruption and redemption. stunning cinematography. lots of allusions and metaphors, as you might expect from Korean cinema. contemplative.

the story appears to centre on the life of buddhist monks living on a floating house, but as the film progresses, one sees that this is a film about the constancy within change and renewal. The female characters are not the most positive roles, representing corruption and temptation, tho also providing the means for renewal.

There are some memorable scenes not least the house in winter and the knife writing scene, this is not for those seeking martial arts action,

personally i found it slipped into one of favourite films list.
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