Movies: While Not A Bad Film, Uncharted Is Not Without Flaws

Let’s get this out of the way before I begin this review. I’ve never played one minute of the Uncharted video game series. Going into the film I knew nothing of the franchise outside of Nathan Drake having a family history of being explorers.

My expectations for this film were to be a mix of Indiana Jones/National Treasure. That was pretty much what the end result was with Uncharted. Will the film stand up to the classic status of Indiana Jones? No. Will Uncharted become a cult favorite like National Treasure spanning a sequel(s)? That’s hard to say.

Hollywood is running on Tom Holland. He’s seemingly in every big film imaginable. Fresh off Spiderman, the young actor has taken on another potential franchise lead as Nathan Drake. Once again, I’ve never played the games, I do believe this was a serious miscast. Drake appeared to me as a rugged, grizzled man with a background in the art of Treasure hunting. What we got with Holland was a boy making a living as a bartender swiping pockets of innocent adolescents (with a rather fill-in-the-blank backstory). Assuming Ruben Fleischer was going for that with this film, loosely basing off the games, I’d say he succeeded. However, that right there should be a warning to any fans, this film is nothing like the PlayStation series.

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I can’t say much for the characters in the film. Despite being miscast, Holland did what he had to do for the role. Mark Whalberg wasn’t anything special. He gave one of your typical Whalberg performances. The two lacked quite a bit of chemistry. In fact, the chemistry between all of the leads was rather poor. Uncharted felt the need to develop the characters as individuals, as opposed to them together. I found this so unlike Fleischer, who had the complete opposite effect with the cast of Zombieland, and, to an extent, Venom.

Character development aside, this is really just your typical action film. There wasn’t much necessarily wrong here, there just wasn’t anything necessarily perfect or different from anything other action films. I’ll say the film did a good job of keeping us guessing as to character motives. Unlike Red Notice, which was my least favorite movie of 2021, the twists in Uncharted felt a bit more logical and surprising. The characters themselves were written well, as was the script, to give us a bit of intrigue for future installments of this franchise.

If I had to pick one big gripe, outside of the character chemistry, Uncharted felt a bit long in certain scenes but also short in others. Holland’s character dies a complete character 180 within the first 10 minutes to agree to join with Whalberg’s character, Sully. While we do get a bit more explanation of his character as the film goes on (again, solid single character development), it just felt rushed. We also get a lot of backstory to the Antonio Banderas character and his involvement, however, that arc becomes relatively useless later in the film.

Regardless, I won’t knock Uncharted too much. It’s a mindless action flick that I would love to see a franchise centered around. This does have its flaws, as any other popcorn flick. It won’t be on the Indiana Jones spectrum of classics based on the first installment. I’d expect a sequel, and I hope it does pick up on some of the flaws, while also keeping intact the fun vibe this film created.

Image Source: Sony