Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished years earlier. Hoping to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance, Croft embarks on a perilous journey to his last-known destination - a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan. The stakes couldn't be higher as Lara must rely on her sharp mind, blind faith.

Although it borrows from the game (and, partially, its sequel) for structure and most of its key action sequences, the movie never feels like a pointless companion piece to a work that was created for a different medium. I've never played the game, but I had a great time watching the movie it inspired, thanks ]to the direction; the stunt choreography, which leans on real performers and props whenever it makes sense to; the emphasis on problem-solving one's way out of tight spots; and most of all, the actors, who flesh out archetypal characters who might have seemed cliched or merely flat on the page, and make them as real as they can, considering what sort of movie they're in.

First among equals is Alicia Vikander. With her faintly regal bearing, she's correctly cast as a woman who's literally to-the-manor-born, but the humility and sense of fair play she exudes makes you like rather than resent the character. More importantly, she's an action hero par excellence. Seemingly bereft of body fat, Vikander hurls herself into action. She makes you feel the physicality of this intensely visceral performance, letting out a high-pitched grunt of rage or pain when Lara crashes into a wall or gets slammed on the ground by a brawny foe, and letting sparks of fury flash in her eyes as Lara delivers a coup-de-grace.

The movie has given a lot of thought to the question of how a small woman could successfully fight opponents who are a lot bigger and stronger. The answers are relentless speed, the strategic use of full body weight, and dirty fighting. This is not to say that 'Tomb Raider' is 'realistic' in any sense, because no video game movie is—at one point, Lara powers through after a puncture wound that would put a 250-pound Green Beret out of commission—but that the filmmakers and Vikander are doing everything they can to sell the physical and emotional reality of a moment.