ANGKOR WAT, Cambodia — Robo-babe Laura Croft, with her mouse-enhanced bod, has leaped through cyberspace into the twisted jungle and temple ruins of 12th century Angkor Wat.

Liberated from her pixels, the computer animation is played by gorgeous Angelina Jolie, 25, who earlier won an Oscar for best supporting actress alongside Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted.

In her new film, Tomb Raider, Jolie portrays brainy archaeologist Croft, who explores Angkor Wat's stone mazes and steep spires in a 21st century, computer game-based thriller.

Jolie appears as a sort of female Indiana Jones, brandishing guns, grenades and other weapons.

Ironically apropos of the film's name, Tomb Raider was shot amid Angkor Wat's extensively looted shrines.

Hailed as the world's largest religious structure, much of Angkor Wat displays bleak alcoves, empty platforms, blank pavilions and defaced chambers devoid of priceless antiquities which have been smuggled into the private collections of the world's wealthiest culture vultures.

Despite armed guards, Angkor Wat is still ground zero for freelance tomb raiders, creating such a problem that some of the surviving statues may be decapitated and sheltered in museums, while fakes are installed in the ruins for tourists to gawk at.

Worry has also been voiced that a glitzy, groupie following for Jolie and Tomb Raider will obliterate Angkor Wat's Hindu ambiance and smother the area with cheap movie memorabilia for years to come.

The respected Phnom Penh Post newspaper warned:

"As Angelina Jolie jumped and dived around Angkor over the course of eight days of shooting in her role as Tomb Raider femme fatale Lara Croft, the film's depiction of brightly dressed monks and seemingly idyllic villages populated by people inexplicably wearing traditional Vietnamese hats — much to the annoyance of the locally hired extras — showed little awareness or sensitivity to the reality of modern Cambodia."

The paper said Angkor Wat's temples will be framed by a new, contemporary mythology, that might one day rival Angkorean myths of creation.

"Tomb Raider tours, T-shirts and theme bars may well become the film's most tangible legacy to nearby Siem Reap" town, it added.

"While the physical structures survived Paramount and Jolie, only after Tomb Raider's summer 2001 release will it be possible to judge whether Lara's visit has protected, or indeed looted, the cultural value of Angkor Wat," the Post said.

For several years, nerds, geeks, yuppies, students and others have drooled whenever computer heroine Lara Croft shot and kick-boxed her way through updated Tomb Raider video games.

Her stunning, statuesque cartoon physique was said to originate from an accidental slip by a creator's hand, while he drew her with a mouse.

Internet chat groups are now bubbling with speculation about whether or not Jolie's nude rear could be the spliced bottom of a stunt actress.

Jolie was quoted as saying about her character, "She's everything I think I'd like to be, and everything I'd like to date.

"She's really bold and funny and loyal, and she's got that wit."

Playing a commando woman is difficult, Jolie added.

"It's physically such a demanding thing."

Croft began life as British software, so the American actress must express a suitably tweaked accent.

While filming in Cambodia, Jolie told reporters, "I was under this beautiful waterfall with this most amazing jungle around me...It was lovely.

"It's hard to talk about. I'm overwhelmed by this place," Jolie said.

With her guns blazing, Jolie also appears in a Potemkin bamboo village, which the film crew built on a sacred pond in front of the fabled, India-inspired temple.

The tiny, ersatz thatched village was erected to take advantage of Angkor Wat's five pointy towers, which create a majestic, staggered skyline.

Angkor Wat is an ideal stage because it is surrounded by dozens of other temples, including Bayon's big spooky heads made of chiseled rock, plus moss-covered ruins gobbled up by the octopus roots of huge gum trees.

In real life, Angkor Wat symbolizes the cosmos according to the Hindu religion.

During the past 30 years of war in Cambodia, leaders such as Pol Pot, Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihanouk have pointed at the temple — built by a lost empire's slaves — as proof that Cambodia was once empowered by genius.

Today, a picture of Angkor Wat occupies the center of the nation's flag, is etched into Cambodia's "riel" currency notes and adorns the label of Angkor Beer and other commercial items.

The Culture Ministry, meanwhile, demanded no gun fights be portrayed inside Angkor Wat.

Cambodia instead wants to publicize a peaceful atmosphere, and distance itself from the atrocities of Pol Pot, which formed the basis of the award-winning film, The Killing Fields.

Jolie was quoted describing Angkor Wat as "very calm, you can't yell there at all. I've never loved a place so much.

"You couldn't get guns in there," Jolie added.

Jolie's father, Academy Award winner Jon Voight, appears in paternal flashbacks during Tomb Raider — as dead explorer Lord Croft — the first time father and daughter have worked together.

Voight is well-known for his role in Midnight Cowboy, and earned an Oscar for best actor as a paraplegic, suicidal Vietnam War veteran in the anti-war movie, Coming Home.

Tomb Raider is directed by Simon West, who previously gripped the screen with his bloody, prisoner-infested "Con Air" film.

During December, Tomb Raider was to be filmed on the so-called, "007 stage" at London's Pinewoods Studios, after shooting here in northwest Cambodia wrapped up in November. Iceland was also to stage some of the spectacle.

Jolie was expected to return to Cambodia in 2001 to appear in Oliver Stone's film, Beyond Borders.

---

Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.

His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo dot com