Uncharted
Starring: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali, Antonio Banderas
Directed By: Ruben Fleischer
Rated: PG-13
Have you ever wished to see a movie based on a video game that made you question your sanity? Have you ever wanted to sit in a theater and be slightly depressed at the fact that $120 million was spent on said movie? Would you like to watch Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland trade quippy one-liners that fall painfully flat? I have the perfect movie for you. Uncharted is the latest film to try its hand at bringing a video game to the big screen and lets just say it won’t be winning any Oscars.
Uncharted is the story of Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) who gets caught up in treasure hunter Victor Sullivan’s (Mark Wahlberg) mission to find Magellan’s lost treasure. They aren’t the only ones looking for the treasure and deception waits around every corner. It’s unknown who can be trusted. The race to the treasure is on.
Uncharted is a mix of National Treasure, Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider. While taking ideas from all of these movies it somehow manages to be a dull action film that leaves you wishing you’d gone to see something else instead. Maybe the video game is better, but this movie left me majorly disappointed.
Tom Holland is playing the exact same role as Peter Parker, just placed in a treasure hunting environment. He’s the awkward out of place young adult who’s trying to adjust to this crazy new life. He doesn’t show a lot of range in the role but I blame a lot of that on the script more than Holland himself.
Mark Wahlberg is the seasoned treasure hunter who will do whatever it takes to find the gold. He tries to be the coolest person in every scene, but several of his lines fall pretty flat. The attempts at humor in this film are simply not funny.
Maybe it’s because of its video game background or maybe it’s because of the writing itself, but the plot of this film is absolutely ridiculous. There is literally a scene in this movie where a helicopter airlifts a pirate ship with just a cable. It flies through the air carrying a PIRATE SHIP ATTACHED BY A CABLE. And no one was questioning it! Sure, I can suspend disbelief while watching a movie but not that much. What helicopter pilot says yes to that mission? “Oh, you need me to go airlift the ancient pirate ship? Ok let me get my cable!” It’s not happening. (I welcome a pilot’s opinion on this.)
The villain situation in Uncharted is quite odd. The promos make it look as if they cast Antonio Banderas, an extremely talented actor as the villain in the movie. Yet when you watch it, he’s barely utilized at all in the film. It’s such a strange decision by the filmmakers that I couldn’t understand it at all. You’re gonna cast Zorro in a movie and then barely use him? What a wasted opportunity.
I’m done ranting about the airlifted pirate ship and the way Antonio Banderas was underutilized. The Uncharted filmmakers have heard enough from me today. This is yet another poor video game-to-film adaptation. The script borrows from far superior films and fails to bring anything new to the table. Uncharted is a mess that you should go ahead and miss.
My Rating: 4/10