Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie
Voight and Jolie have a notoriously strained relationship off-screen, but there’s no evidence of that in the first Lara Croft movie, made while they were still on civil terms. Indeed, there’s little but mutual father-daughter admiration in their interactions here. Voight plays a skilled veteran who doesn’t mind being upstaged and eclipsed by his brazen daughter in their shared field of endeavor (in this case, supernatural archaeology, of the Indiana Jones variety).
Everything about this video game adaptation is pretty shameless, from Jolie’s spot-on appropriation of a British upper-class accent, to her curve-hugging look-but-don’t-touch wardrobe, to the casting of Voight as her character’s dad, and yet it all works, in a base, pandering way. Maybe there’s something extravagant about the movie’s purchase of emotional heft by casting real-life father-daughter Oscar-winning actors, but you almost have to admire the movie’s unruffled shamelessness.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fJArvSVqEo]