Game Informer's Imran Khan has good things to say about Vikander, and not-so-good-things to say about everything else: "Tomb Raider is not without positive qualities, such as Vikander's characterization and a few genuinely fun action scenes, but they are only redemptive of their individual moments and not the movie as a whole. Sloppy visuals and unnecessary amounts of exposition take away from a movie that does a good job setting up Lara Croft as an interesting character." It's just a pretty lackluster film overall. "Tomb Raider hits the basic requirements to be called a decent origin story. Heroic Hollywood 's Nick Kazden says Tomb Raider is "another mediocre film adaptation", adding: Reviewing the film for AP, Lindsey Bahr says Tomb Raider "isn't half bad" and adds: "his video game adaption is better than most with set pieces that are both fun and ridiculous (like a high-stakes escape room) that actually seem to approximate the experience of playing a video game." It's been a thrill to see so many physically powerful women on screen in recent years, but this deglammed Lara Croft feels like the rare heroine who proudly wears dirt under her chipped fingernails." Slate's Inkoo Kang is one of the few critics to offer a genuinely positive review of Tomb Raider, describing the film as "thrilling": "An obligatory setup for a sequel slows down the final moments, but until then, Tomb Raider feels like a perfectly paced trio of espresso shots, with a shot of adrenaline to the heart as a chaser. James Marsh at South China Morning Post says the film's action – one of its chief selling-points – leaves much to be desired: "Norwegian director Roar Uthaug ( The Wave) makes the most of his locations, but the action is edited to ribbons, and an over-reliance on CG augmentation starves the more ambitious set pieces of any sense of threat or physicality." The film strains credulity even for a vid-game fantasy by letting the leading lady recover awfully quickly from bad injuries, but other than that Vikander commands attention and is the element here that makes Tomb Raider sort of watchable." Slim and not tall, she doesn't cut the figure of a muscled powerhouse, but here she fully embodies physical tenacity and grit, along with absolute determination not to give in or up. Todd McCarthy at the Hollywood Reporter is another critic to single out Vikander's performance, while also saying the film itself is lacking: "When all the one-dimensional supporting characters and familiar action moves fall by the wayside, the one thing left standing is Vikander. (In the film's final moments, it even flashes back to a scene 90 seconds earlier.)" A cheesy voiceover serves as dunderheaded prologue, and all but consumes the narrative motion of the second act flashbacks get out of hand in their attempts to round out Lara and Richard's relationship. IndieWire's Kate Erbland calls Tomb Raider "dumb fun" but says the film "can't get away from the typical tropes of the genre": "Despite a fresher heroine, "Tomb Raider" still has all sorts of retrograde video game movie tropes. Rather, like that guy in those movies that the Tomb Raider franchise relies upon for inspiration, it's just difficult enough that success feels like an accomplishment.
Vikander doesn't make this all look easy. Tomb Raider exploits her ability to injects a boundless energy into the Croft persona as she sweats through jungle chases, bike races, and dock brawls with a compulsively watchable level of effort. "Never let it be said that Vikander isn't up to a challenge.