If there ever was a video game franchise that seems tailor-made for the big screen, it’s Uncharted. The cinematic action set pieces of the games lend themselves to thrilling and death-defying moments for the hero, Nathan Drake.
In the movie Uncharted, Tom Holland plays Nathan Drake, a wise-talking wanna-be adventurer whose obsession with history and treasure makes him the perfect accomplice for Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg). Together, they face powerful foes, treasure hunts, and their own bad decisions.
There’s so much this movie wants to emulate from the game series that it trips over itself in the attempt. The first scene is an intense struggle in a cargo plane that happens halfway through the movie. Then it immediately jumps back to 15 years previous to set up the backstory of Nathan and his brother. Then we jump back to present day, or a few weeks before the cargo plane scene. It pulls both of these scenes (that were done better) from multiple games (there are 4 of them altogether).
This movie also treats this as Nathan’s first real adventure. Basically, it’s his origin story. The only real reason I think they’ve set it up this way is to make an excuse for Tom Holland’s age. The character from the games is in his mid-30s. He’s world-weary and throws caution to the wind. Holland’s version is a bartender and pick-pocket who really likes maps. There’s really nothing more to him than the “gee-whiz” demeanor we’ve come to expect from Holland’s Spider-Man iteration. I know they needed a name to help launch this potential franchise, but they chose the wrong name.
What makes the narrative of the games truly work is that Drake traipses through jungles and dangerous habitats largely on his own. Sure, he has the random guidance of Sully, or is joined by others for a scene or two, but the adventure comes with the elements of one person versus the impossible. The screenwriters missed this completely as they pair Holland up with his costars at all times. They don’t quite trust Holland to be the focus. Mark Wahlberg, who was once cast as Drake, must have made sure he was the co-lead in his contract. The script tries its best to make him look unreliable, but the plot point goes nowhere.
If you’ve missed National Treasure with its church-exploring/cavern-careening/riddle-solving, you’ve come to the right place. Though, the exploration is laughably bad in Uncharted. There’s one moment when Nathan has faced death several times in order to find a very secret cave underground. And as he’s in peril again, Mark Wahlberg literally yells down at him from a large city sewer drain. Literally, this sewer drain looks right down into a treasure room. This is not played for a joke.
There’s also so many strange subplots that really detract from the pacing. This easily matches Mission Impossible 2 for the amount of double-crossings and fake outs.
The positives with Uncharted is that even at two hours, it manages to fly by in a relatively brisk way. I was somewhere between never being bored, but also never really thrilled. The visuals are also interesting. Sure, it’s goofy to have an air chase where pirate ships are being carried by helicopters, but it’s also never been done before, so it feels unique.
Uncharted feels like an adventure flick made for 10 year olds. It’s nearly PG with its content and never really does too much to challenge the audiences’ collective brains. It feels like the filmmakers saw Tomb Raider from a few years back and said, “That was far too memorable and a little too scary. Let’s tone it all the way down.” Holland will be a draw for audiences unfamiliar with the games, but he’s altogether unconvincing as a potential explorer. Because this feels so similar to every other action movie, Uncharted feels…. well… charted. C
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