Word: crofts
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America as a whole seems to be taking that to heart these days, with its omnivorous appetite for all things World War II, and the new video-game movie, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, in which Angelina Jolie travels back to spend quality time with her dead father, played by her living one, Jon Voight. If you really want to feel old and out of it (and who doesn't), go see Tomb Raider. I did, and was by four decades the oldest person in the cultist audience of teenagers. (Actually, there was another fellow my age in the theater...
...wannabe playa whose lady catches him, ahem, hangin' with the girl next door. Its name comes from the oaf's absurd, shameless alibi, and to hear the lyrics, you'd think this lady was just another Oprah-watching female American victim. But on screen, she's craftier than Lara Croft. She spies on her beau, narrow-eyed, everywhere he goes, using a little handheld device that looks suspiciously like the latest Nokia handset. He can't hide. He definitely can't escape. Big Sistah is watching. And Big Sistah's got a GPS receiver...
Both the stunts and sets attempt to stick close to what game players would expect. Consultants from Eidos, the software company that makes the game, hung around to be sure West didn't stray too far from the Croft mythology. Adrian Smith, the man who first typed the code that brought Lara into being nine years ago, traveled to the London set to give his blessing. Smith was impressed that Croft Manor's Old Library was stuffed with genuine, dusty old books on archaeology that visitors to the set could actually pick off the shelf and read...
...game, the movie plot has Croft setting out in search of an ancient and mystical artifact: in this case, the two components of the Clock of Ages, a dusty device that tracks the alignment of the planets and may help solve the mystery of her father's death. But there are changes in the way Croft goes about her business. Far from being a full-time tomb raider, she now has a day job as a Pulitzer prizewinning photojournalist (why or when she has time to do this is unclear, but cameras and prints are scattered around Croft Manor...
...there's any development that will rub Tomb Raider fans the wrong way, it's Croft's newfound pals. In the game, she operates alone. Now, perhaps, Croft has too many sidekicks. The spectral presence of her father (played by Jolie's real-life dad, Jon Voight) is a cute addition, but we could probably do without the cockney comic relief called Bryce (played by Noah Taylor, the teenage David Helfgott in Shine). At any rate, Jolie feels right at home in her strange new world. "All the reasons I'm right for this movie are all the reasons...