The original Tomb Raider series started in 2001 with Angelina Jolie as the star of that movie franchise. I wondered while watching this remake if it was made more because of the looks and star power of Alicia Vikander or because of the popularity of the original Tomb Raider movies from 17 years ago. When you think about movies like this and an upcoming star who is trying to make the big money in a movie role, you have to admire the months of training and hard to work to get into the shape necessary for all of the stunts and fight scenes that were all very impressive in this film. The problem now is, how do you make this new Tomb Raider movie unique enough so that is memorable or at least more memorable than the first Tomb Raider franchise?

I thought the story was just OK, nothing really special. A trip to Hong Kong, Lara looking for her father, a boat trip an island with caves, and very old machines that open up walls and ancient burial grounds and mummies. What makes this movie watchable are some of the impressive fight scenes, action sequences, special effects and the perfect Hollywood face of Alicia Vikander, but not the story. For these reasons, I do recommend Tomb Raider.

I frequently talk about how difficult it is to write a great new screenplay on this blog. First of all the story has to be a brand new idea, maybe even something that never has been done before. Then in order to be memorable, a story twist or a scene of great acting has to be involved somewhere so the movie stays in your mind. Unfortunately “Gringo” is not unique enough to really remember, other than one line where the main character played by David Oyelowo says “we are living in an upside down world, it doesn’t pay to be a good person anymore”. While sitting through this movie I kept thinking too many times that I have seen this before, so for that reason I did not find this movie compelling enough to recommend.

Gringo stars Charlize Theron, David Oyelowo and Thandie Newton and for the most part the acting is good throughout this film. At times I found the plot, that involves kidnapping and some twists and turns unnecessarily confusing and at times rather boring. While this is not a bad movie, its not that good either. Overall I will pass on Gringo.

While watching this very bad movie I remember thinking that perhaps this entire screenplay was written in reverse. In other words some producer thought that because of all the very damaging hurricanes we have had in this country in the last few months that perhaps this idea would be some kind of a draw at the box office. Then add a band of criminals who use a huge hurricane to distract others from their crime and throw in the old recycled currency idea that was used in the also bad movie “Den of Thieves” and we have a hit. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this move are a very low 25% but my rating is even lower about 5% because the idea and the story for this film is so bad. On top of this the special effects of the hurricane especially at the end of the movie don’t look like a hurricane at all, most like a giant nuclear dust cloud. This entire movie is stupid and should be avoided by everyone. Run from this horrible mess.