Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life
by Werner Poegel on Nov.18, 2009, under Time Travel Movies
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life is a 2003 action film directed by Jan de Bont, and starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft. It is a sequel to the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Plot
Lara Croft is tasked by MI6 to find Pandora’s Box, an object from ancient legends which supposedly contains one of the deadliest plagues on Earth, before evil Nobel Prize-winning scientist turned bioterrorist Jonathan Reiss can get his hands on it. The key to finding the box, which is hidden in the mysterious Cradle of Life, is a magical luminous orb that serves as a map. Lara finds the orb while exploring the submerged Luna Temple following an earthquake off the coast of Santorini, but it is stolen by crime lord Chen Lo, who in turn plans to sell the orb to Reiss. Lara recruits an old lover, Terry Sheridan, a former mercenary and Royal Marine who had spent his last couple of years in prison in Kazakhstan, to help her track down Chen Lo and the orb.
Among the action sequences that take place during this time are the duo’s entry into mainland China, a fight scene in suburban Shanghai, and a leap off the then-under-construction International Finance Centre skyscraper in Hong Kong, landing on a ship out in the Kowloon Bay. The orb later reveals the location of the Cradle of Life to be somewhere near Kilimanjaro in Africa. Lara, unknowingly, reveals the location to Reiss when she sends this info back to Bryce back at Croft Manor. Meanwhile, Lara and Terry begin to fall in love with each other again but Lara starts to back away from him.
Lara meets up with Kosa, an African friend who serves as her translator as they obtain information from a local tribe about the Cradle of Life. However, many of the tribesmen are soon killed, and Lara captured, by Reiss’ soldiers upon his arrival. Reiss threatens to kill Bryce, Hillary, and Kosa unless Lara leads him to the Cradle of Life. Soon they face perils such as a forest full of shadow monsters that kill immediately when they sense movement, and a pool of highly corrosive black acid which holds the box. During this time, Terry arrives, frees Reiss’ captives, and catches up to Lara.
Following a climactic fistfight between Lara and Reiss, Reiss is knocked into the acid pool by Lara after he is distracted by Terry. Terry treats Lara’s injuries and she gives him a kiss as a way of saying thank-you. When the couple tries to leave, Terry attempts to take Pandora’s box as compensation for finding it, but she staunchly refuses to let him leave with it. Despite her love for him, this results in Lara being forced to fatally shoot him in self-defence just after Terry draws his own gun. Lara places Pandora’s Box back into the pool, and realises that some things were not meant to be found.
from wikipedia
