BARE knuckles, reckless courage, quick wits ... Alicia Vikander pares Lara Croft back to her bare essentials in this muscular reboot of the groundbreaking 2001 franchise.

The updated version of the camouflaged character that turned Angelina Jolie into Hollywood’s first bankable female action star has less pout, more clout.

Vikander’s 2018 model is leaner, meaner and paradoxically more vulnerable — and this raises the film’s emotional stakes.

Since the contemporary Croft is a super-fit athlete rather than a freak of nature, we feel her body puncture, her sinews strain.

Her first kill, too, is strangely disturbing in a genre with an exceptionally high body count. He’s a villain and a nasty one, but as the man takes his last breath, it’s clear Croft has crossed a line.

Even on a physical level, Vikander’s Croft moves the goalposts.

In the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie, Jolie’s pneumatic shape and unattainable beauty caused an exciting tension between the character as an emblem of female empowerment and as an object of sexual desire.

That debate continues — although it must be noted here that the reboot’s preview screening was 80 per cent male.

It will be interesting to see what both genders make of the current version, who like her video game character, has become noticeably less sexualised.

Tomb Raider marks the English-language debut of Roar Uthaug (The Wave).

The Norwegian director is clearly more comfortable with the film’s action sequences than he is with the slightly hokey English aristocrat backstory involving Lara and her missing father (Dominic West).

And there is a strange disconnect between the film’s introductory sequence in London, where Lara is put through her paces in the kickboxing ring, and Hong Kong, to which she travels in search of her father.

After a close friendship is set up between Lara, a bicycle courier, and her flatmate (Hannah John-Kamen), the latter then fails to make a reappearance.

Something to the effect of “you won’t be home late?” is her parting line.

Uthaug, however, is in his element once Croft begins her quest.

The shipwreck sequence is as spectacular as one might expect from the man who directed The Wave.

There’s also a jaw-dropping set piece involving a rusty aeroplane and a thundering waterfall.

And Croft’s escape from the titular tomb is a cracker.

Daniel Wu does a lot with very little in the sidekick role of Lu Ren and Walton Goggins is solid as Tomb Raider’s mercenary villain but this is Vikander’s film.

Tom Raider is an origin story that charts Croft’s evolution from scrappy bicycle courier to well, mythical tomb raider. The Swedish actor nails it.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is now showing.