As our film opens, we find relic hunter (oops, sorry, that's Tia Carrere) Miss Croft up to her usual explorations and treasure hunting, poking her nose into other people's eternal resting places all in the name of profit. As her reward she's attacked by a robotic attack drone, kinda like the one on Red Planet, only bigger. Well, being the heroine and resident bad-ass broad, Lara defeats the killer toaster, unloading a few clips into it's shiny hide, pistol whipping the circuitry out of it, doing circus acrobatics all over it's ass and finally yanking the wire guts from it, Lara finally stops it with, well, a simple request of "stop!"... she then pops in some typical crappy hip-hop rave party music and we learn that, yes, this was all a training session set up by Lara's resident live-in (technically live-out, as in "outside in the front yard in a camper") techno wiz, who doesn't really need a name, as I won't refer to him much in the course of this review. Just know he's a really lanky, pale and ugly British guy in his 20s. After her workout, Miss Croft teases us with a nippleless shower sequence before the focus turns to Venice Italy, towards the resident villains of the movie. Indy had the Nazis and the Ark of the Covenant, Lara's got the legendary secret society know as the Illuminati and their magical triangle that control the flow of time for the possessor. Sure, it may not melt disgruntled Germans with Biblical prejudice, but it's a cool thing to have when entertaining at birthday parties!

The Illuminatis are a clandestine gang made up of the world's wealthiest and most powerful elitists. Not satisfied with all their cash, they've decided to pool their efforts into looking for legendary items that can do the one thing money can't: make Circus Peanuts edible. Oh, and bend time to their greedy little wills... that too. Conspiracy theorist and X-Philes reading this probably already know of the Illuminati, as should anyone who saw Razorblade Smile. To find the triangle of power though, the geezers must first uncover the compass key that will point them in the direction of the pieces. They'd better do it quick too, because they only have a few days until the planetary alignments are out of position and they're stuck waiting another 5000 years for the cosmic occurrence to happen again. In charge of the search for this compass is Manfred Powell, a lowly Illuminati gofer that has higher ambitions in mind... we all know he's going to turn on them and try to take the power for himself later, so there's probably no harm in my stating it right now, right? Okay, just so long as we're all on the same page here... the same, typical, formulaic page that Hollywood always seems to line our cages with... bah, down with the Gestalt entertainment community and it's repressive lies and repetitious bullshit! Actually, I'm just gonna get back to the review, my back hurts far too much to start any revolutions in the entertainment industry. Meanwhile, this cosmological occurrence also happens to fall on the time of year that marks the anniversary of Lara's father, Lord Richard Croft (legendary screen presence John Voight, Jolie's real life father... I guess), who disappeared during an Egyptian dig 15 years prior.

Before his untimely demise, Dick told his daughter about the Triangle of Light, which she's now having flashbacks of in her dreams. At first, you might think this is some kind of annoying coincidence that Lara happens to be the only non-Illuminati to know about the triangle, as I did when I first watched this movie. However, speaking as someone who's seen this all the way to the end, you'll find out later it's not so much a coincidence as it is a forewarning from Lord Croft. Speaking of which, Lara's keen sense of hearing (to the point of bullshit-unless-she's-a-mutant-keen) awakens her from such a flashback, as she detects an old clock ticking behind one of the walls of her mansion... downstairs. Breaking through her wall with the grace of a professional wrestler, Lara finds the old timepiece, which laid dormant until this exact moment of the planetary alignment. Yes, somehow Lord Croft had the ingenuity to set up his little clock to start up a decade and a half after his disappearance, but we won't contemplate exactly how he did that. Not the patient type, Lara busts open her father's little gift to get to the chewy nougat center inside: an odd and old looking, oversized stopwatch, which I'm betting 100-to-1 is the device that Powell needs to locate the triangles. When Lara takes the circular antiquity to her father's pal Wilson (an antiques dealer, not Tom Hanks' schizophrenic volleyball), who refers her to his lawyer friend... Manfred Powell... yes, Wilson is an Illuminati. Still a stranger to the whole Illuminati existence, Lara heads to Mr. Powell seeking answers. After chatting with him for all of two minutes and hearing him say "my ignorance amuses me", she knows right off the bat that the guy's a liar and a moron... though she probably devised that as soon as she heard he was a lawyer...

Anyway, Powell makes verbal his desire to see the device, which Lara declines. Sure enough she gets some unwelcome visitors on her doorstep later that night, and it's not those heathen bastards the Jehovah's Witnesses either, unless of course they've changed their conservative manors of dress to a more "Danger: Diabolik master criminal" motif, complete with black jumpsuits and night vision goggles... helps them get the drop on potential converts I guess. Interrupted in the middle of her nightly bungee acrobatics workout, Lara and her housemates (her single butler and the computer geek) dispatch the violence prone wielders of automatic weapons with an arsenal of firearms, projectile power tools and fancy footwork that would make a gold metal gymnast hang themselves by their spandex in jealousy. However, despite their best efforts, the Illuminati thugs still make off with what they came for: Jolie's homemade fetish dungeon porns of her and Billy Bob... uhm, and the compass thingy too. The following morning, a letter is delivered to Miss Croft that was sent to her by her father 15 years ago. Okay, I know the post office has billions upon billions of pieces of mail to sort through and tamper with and lose, but 15 years?! Okay, so it was sent as per his orders, but still, the post office pisses me off and I just wanted to bitch. The letter gives Lara a more detailed background on the origins of the triangle and the locating device. Turns out that 5000 years earlier, the last time the planets aligned like they are now, a meteor fell to Earth. The primitives that lived nearby saw it as a sign of the Gods and forged from the meteor their magical geometric tool of chronological destruction, the Triangle of Light. I guess a triangle was the easiest shape to craft, as a square has too many side, a straight line would just be boring and a circle, well, NOBODY can draw a perfect circular object, so that's out of the question.

Also inside the crater left by the meteor, the people built a city to worship the triangle, and they called Triangle-opolis, the Great City of Triangles! Okay, so they never really gave the city a name, so I guess you could refer to it as Walla-Walla if you wanna be technical. As for the triangle, it granted the owner the power to travel through the timestream willingly and warp history or the future in the user's personal image. Such a powerful creation is bound to attract "those who would use it for evil purposes", just like any devise of supernatural cosmic power, so the triangle had to be broken into two pieces and taken to opposite ends of the Earth, where they were stored away in booby trapped tombs... hence why Lara's in this damn story, to do what she does best: shake her tits around and wear tight shorts. Even without the compass to help her locate the triangle fractions, Dick told Lara where the first piece is located right in the letter, which might not've been the greatest idea, had the Illuminati any flex in the covert world of postal handling and delivery, but they got the compass, so I guess they don't really need a mailman to help them in their bid for world domination. So, as I was about to say, Lara's off to Cambodia and the first triangle piece, so she can find both pieces and destroy them as per daddy's last wishes. And, since they do have the compass, as I've mentioned several times already, Powell and his posse of goons are already on their way.

With the help of Lara's ex-lover and fellow tomb raider Alex Powell and the Illuminati foot soldiers are already trying to yank the tomb's front door off it's hinges when Croft arrives, leaving her to do what I like to do and take the backdoor... and yes, I like to do it in the back of a Volkswagen too... prostitutes be forewarned! Both sides eventually converge inside, and are forced to work together to unravel the puzzles of the triangle worshipers and unlock the first piece of the time altering relic. Of course, don't think that a gang of people who bow and pray to an Isosceles God are going to leave such a treasure unguarded for outsiders to put their grubby paws on, because then you'd have a hard time explaining why there's a small army of stone warriors that assault the group after the first piece has been plucked. Golem wielding swords and ape-like gargoyles swoop down on everyone, attacking both Lara and the Illuminati henchmen, which would seem cooler if not for two things: (1) - the CGI could've been a LOT better on those golems and (2) - it's hard to believe that large creatures made of solid stone are going to be cut down like oversized plastic action figures courtesy of everyday gunfire. Yes, in spite of their relatively large and solid statures, the guardians winds up rubble on the temple floor because they can't stand up to a few automatic rifles and some handguns. I can understand the ones dying because Lara hacks 'em up with their own swords, or even the ones who shatter just by crashing into each other, after all, if there's nothing else that Sorority Babes In the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama taught bad-movie goers like myself, the best way to fight fire is with fire, i.e. magic against magic negates magic (and stubborn grass stains)... though I always found out, rather painfully, that fire simply ADDS to fire... my fur will never grow back from that incident.

After battling computer generated monsters for a little while, the big momma golem comes to life. 30 feet tall with six arms, three faces and a truck load of Whoop-Ass on her mind, the guardian creature slowly stalk Lara through the tomb, until she too is dropped with relative ease thanx to our heroine, her trusty sidearms, and a big stone battering ram... I have to question the old Illuminati's architectural methods here, because that ram was supposedly set up to pop an urn the granite Goddess was holding, yet it's easily used to take her down too. If they really DIDN'T mean for that to be the outcome, they could've easily set it up so the urn was drained with a sword or a spear, or something far less threatening to the guardian who happened to be set DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF THE BIG STONE BATTERING RAM! Though, again, far be it from me to question the motives of an ancient race of people... who self-destructed and created a world altering item that they made only to split in two and hide... Sometimes being a God, let alone one with common sense AND omnipotence (and no, not "impotence"), is more a burden than a gift. Either way, our protagonist escapes into the jungle with the first half of the triangle. We could probably end it right here and now, with Lara destroying her piece, thereby making the junctioning of the two halves impossible and saving the world. Besides, after the third rate job the ancient Illuminati did on their Insta-Break tomb guardians, I'd imagine the triangle's probably not too hard to bust up either.

However, that would make too much sense, and Lara's left to seek out the second half. However, how can she do that without the compass? If her dead poppa knew where to find it, he probably would've mentioned that in his letter too. This means that Lara's only option is to find Powell and work out an agreement to find the second half. During their little meeting, Powell informs her a little more on the Illuminati and, being a guy, lies to her about his position in the group, saying he's the right hand of "God" instead of the little whipping boy gofer we all know he really is. He also tells her that her father Dick was an Illuminati member and his personal trainee, though she never told her anything about it. This could be a lie, which wouldn't surprise anyone, but it would make a whole lot of sense on how Dick's the only one other than the Illuminati who knows about the Triangle of Light... so of course, he must BE an Illuminati. This prompts Powell to attempt seducing Lara with the promise of seeing and talking to her father once again, maybe even to go back in time and prevent his death. But, only if she gives him her half of the triangle... of course she can't trust him, but she can always steal it from him before he activates it, so she goes along with it. So, combining forces, Lara and her hired help journey to the remains of the Illuminati crater city ruins, lovingly referred to as "the Dead Zone" (which reminds me, Christopher Walken could've done this film a lot of help), with the Illuminati guys and Alex. In a rush to beat the solar eclipse that will mark the final important stage of the planetary alignment, they climb like monkeys all over a big steel model of the solar system, losing several Illuminati goons in the process, who wind up crushed between the moving parts. Ouch.

The second half is found by Lara, who uses the compass to activate some kind of Hoover portal, which sucks her into the big steel ball representing the sun in the model's center. When she materializes outside of it, triangle in hand, she hands over both pieces to the leader of the secret cult, who tries to make some big deal speech before he gets cut off... by a bullet in the back, courtesy of Powell. For anyone who didn't expect that, I'd like you to look up two terms in the dictionary: "double cross" and "gullible". When Powell attempts to combine the two halves, he discovers that it's not that easy. So, he sheaths his knife in Alex's chest and forces Lara to figure it out, not just because he'll kill her if she doesn't, but because she can save Alex AND her father if she does so. I'm not sure how, but Croft happens to know exactly what to do, using a mechanism taken from the compass device to join the triangle together in the waning light of the eclipsing sun. But, instead of giving it up to Powell, she uses it to send herself back in time to talk with her father. He refuses to know his fate, as he doesn't wish to tamper with time, only to destroy the triangle and save the world. So, with a final heartfelt adios to pappy, Lara goes back to the moment of Alex's death, stopping time while the knife is still in the air, turning it around with her bare hands and rerouting it back towards Powell. She then shoots the triangle, which shatters into a million pieces (I knew that thing would probably have the fortitude of peanut brittle) and jump starts time again. Despite the complete lack of sense in the physics involved, the knife flies toward Powell and finds it's mark in his chest... as opposed to what it would've really done and kept flying at Alex, only hitting him handle first instead of blade first, but obvious Newton's Laws don't apply to Lara Croft and her magic triangle... or her CGI tits now that I think about it.

While everyone else escapes the crumbling ruins of the temple city, Lara's lured into a final match of fisticuffs with the dying Powell, who has her father's pocket watch in his possession. The two duke it out and Lara puts the "grrr" back in girl power, breaking the bastard's neck and leaving him for dead while she avoids falling debris and escapes to safety via dog sled, errr, dog ski. From here we jump ahead to a final scene with Lara (in a dress no less) ending the movie the way she opened it, and the end credits role. Though incredibly predictable and lacking in what would be considered even the most common of sense, all in all not a horrible product, especially considering other video game films that came before it. Though, I do think it's sad that they had to make Jolie's melons with a computer. I was never really a big fan of the games myself anyway, so giving it a 3 is my generous act for the day.

Physically and attitude-wise, I have to admit that Jolie was perfect for the lead. Sure, her ass wasn't of Lopez caliber, nor were her tits the Anna Nicole-Smith capacity of her video game counterpart, but her lips are perfectly huge. It looks like a fucking swarm of wasps take turns planting their stingers in those things every day! Seriously Angelina, put some ice on those things, I don't think that kind of swelling is healthy for a person. Then again, maybe Billy Bob likes to inflate them with a bicycle pump for her as a form of foreplay before she slaps 'em about his shriveled nutsac... okay, that's as much as I can say without the overwhelming urge to vomit taking me beyond the point of control... As for the CGI breasts, they seriously frighten me at times! The computer geeks went a little overboard at some points, as the digital mammories twist and elongate to shapes that are unnatural even for a Troma chick! I know this seems to be an obsession with me, but the filmmakers went through all the effort and dinero just to make those damn boobs creepy! At some points, you'd think they were sentient and had their own free will! Now there's an idea for a movie... As for direction and everything else, I suppose it was a fair job by Simon West, whose previous credits include The General’s Daughter and Con Air. Moderate action but little else for people searching for more substance. However, if you can look beyond those massive lips and the idea of Angelina Jolie jumping around in tight fitting clothes is your idea of total entertainment, then feel free to rent Tomb Raider. As for me, I've got to test the new security system. There's no way Jolie's raiding MY tomb... unless she let's me raid hers first, heh heh.

H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S. Rating:
- It's a pure popcorn flick, so it could work depending on your choice of friends. For the original H.O.P.E.L.E.S.S.? Not so much.

Sequel: Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life

If You Liked This Flick, Check Out: The Mummy or Underworld

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