Uncharted

Let’s cut straight to the chase: Uncharted does not break the curse of the videogame movie. It seems, at this point, that no console adaptation will even get close to matching its gaming counterpart and Uncharted goes on the bargain bin pile alongside the recent likes of Assassin’s Creed, Sonic The Hedgehog and Warcraft.

It doesn’t lack in ambition but for a film that’s been mired in development hell, and effectively ‘on the go’ for 15 years, there’s absolutely no excuse for it to be this lazy, poorly-written and rushed.

The fact that it’s also based on a game series famous for its ‘movie-like’ plots and set pieces feels especially poor, watching a playthrough of the game will give you better dialogue than this.

Choosing to go down the ‘prequel’ route does feel like the right move, much better to do that now than later in the series (a theatrical sequel would be a surprise though) but the story feels like a bit of a rush job: it’s the standard ‘collect item to find lost gold’ adventure we’ve seen a million times before and the lack of character depth and rapport is startling considering these are characters that fans will have spent plenty of time with.

Tom Holland does well, he has charm and charisma to spare as evidenced from Spider-Man and can hold the movie aloft amidst the clichés and misfiring ‘banter’. Whether he really ‘is’ Nathan Drake is still very much up for debate but perhaps he will grow into the role given the chance. Mark Wahlberg does the best he can as Sully but the two very quickly go from meeting to globe trotting adventure and the relationship feels off, as mentioned the jokes fall completely flat and the not-so-surprising narrative reveal towards the end just doesn’t land.

The first two thirds of the film carry the weight of those years of cancellations and delays. It feels like different people have worked on it and it lacks cohesiveness, feeling like whole storylines have been lopped out of the story for no discernible reason. A half-baked, murky-motivation villain (standard) offers no threat but the one surprising narrative twist [SLIGHT SPOILER] puts a different antagonist in place and what follows are two set pieces which almost rescue the whole enterprise.

The first is an almost first-person plane jump sequence which you will have spied in the trailer which leads into a battle on a flying pirate ship (don’t worry, it makes sense, the film deciding to steer away from the more fantastical elements of the game series) which is pretty damn original when compared to the standard ‘city destroying’ blockbuster endings we’re used to.

This ending, and the post-credits stinger, gives enough evidence to suggest that, maybe, there’s something here moving forward and a potential sequel could perhaps finally put an end to that famed videogame movie curse but sadly this film is not that solution.

2 stars **