Uncharted shouldn’t work. From all the trailers it appeared to be a mismatched retread of the games’ finer moments with miscast actors who poorly represent so many characters we’ve come to lov﷽e over the years. It felt like an easy blockbuster win riding on Tom Holland’s starpower than a film with any redeeming qualities.
While it is far from perfect and falls flat on a number of occasions, this version of Uncharted remains a swashbuckling adventure that I couldn’t help but crack a smile at. Many of its emotional moments border on the contrived and some casting decision💯s still confound me, but when Uncharted hopes to channel the spirit of its video game inspirationꦚs it manages to soar far more often than it falls.
This adaptation is a bespoke retelling of Drake’s Deception and A Thief’s End, combining facets of Naughty Dog’s beloved games while seeking to weave its own tale🔴 that takes these characters to new and unexpected places. The opening scene features a tearful farewell between Nathan and Sam Drake, a sibling relationship that is continually alluded to throughout the film as a source of tension between Nate and Sully. The conclusion is achingly predictable, but it was in the games, and the same energy is channeled here.
Fast-forward 15 years and Nate is working as a scheming bartender in New York City. On the surface he’s a charming twink capable of chatting up the ladies, but behind that pretty face sits a thief who isn’t afraid to snatch jewellery and sell it on for a quick profit. He’s catching small fish, but a lifelong fascination with history means the adventurer inside him is always begging to break free. Then along comes𝓀 Mark Wahlberg’s Victor Sullivan, who initially appears as if he’s trying to pick up Nathan Drake after his shift like some sort of creeper, a consequence of casting an actor who is far too young to properly inhabit the role of a grizzled veteran treasure hunter.
Once the dodgy vibes have subsided we follow Nate to Sully’s apartment as he seeks to pilfer this boomer of his riches. What he finds is the breadcrumb trail of a mystery he and his brother have spent a lifetime searching for. The trail remains hot, so it isn’t long until Sully recruits him on a globe-trotting escapade that involves outsmarting Antonio Banderas' Moncada, a bloodthirsty treasure hunter eager to keep the riches for himself in the face of his father breaking him away from the family fortune. Sophia Ali teams up with our duo of thieves as a younger iteration of Chloe Frazer, while Tati Gabrielle inhabits the shoes of Braddock, one of the film’s few original characters and a compelling villain in her own right.
Uncharted drags its feet in the opening act. The auction house scene is played out with the utmost accuracy, but mediocre combat sequences and a lack of comedic flair between Holland and Wahlberg means the stronger moments inevitably fall flat. It’s clumsy, and we’re thrown into this mystery far too quickly to form any connection to the stakes or characters. Sully is the biggest problem here. In the games he is an endearing father figure to Nathan Drake, a tinge of greed always circumvented by a willingness to do the right thing and leave his thirst for r🍰iches behind. In the film he’s just an asshole, betraying those close to him without a care in the world with a performance that doesn’t sell the years of hardened experience this character is meant to have. Wahlberg phones it in, which is a shame because Holland is clearly giving his all here, possessing a passion for the source material that makes him feel like a worthwhile depiction of a legendary PlayStation mascot.
Once we start travelling around the globe th🐈ings pick up, a sequence involving the investigation of a church and a collection of sprawling underground ruins feel pulled straight from the games, yet it’s told with a level of originality similar set pieces are lacking. We’re solving puzzles alongside them, a singular item being used as a key that is continually built upon with a growing mythology that makes the treasure we’re hunting for all the more alluring. Here the film starts spinning𝐆 and never lets up with the cargo plane sequence managing to shine despite repeating everything the game did well, while the flying pirate ship chase seen in the trailers is vintage Uncharted.
It’s ridiculous, with Nate and Sully mu🦄rdering endless waves of henchman with guns, swords, and blunt pieces of wood as ever🤪ything around them defies the laws of physics. During the games we see these characters put through situations where there is no way they’d survive in reality, and the film plays with a similar suspension of disbelief in the best possible way. With the exception of a few dramatic character moments, we aren’t meant to take any of it seriously, the tone a mixture between National Treasure and Pirates of the Caribbean. Don’t go in hoping to question the film’s approach to realism or how these characters are managing to get around because you will not have a good time.
This magnetic sense of pacing and a relationship between Nate and Sully I came to love is sadly stifled by Chloe Frazer. This younger version of the character is too inconsistent for her own good, failing to feel like an accurate depiction of the game’s heroine. She’s younger and reckless, that much I understand, but her accent is awful, and her delivery falters far too often for me to care about where her character ended up. It’s a shame, and part of me wishes Elena Fisher was given the spotlight instead, perhaps reimagined to work alongside a younger Nate. I wanted this film to distance itself from the games in a certain way, but it needs to nail the fundamentals before doing so, and that includes the characters. From that perspective, Chloe is perhaps the weakest link of them all. Even Wah🍃lberg grew on me more than Ali.
Uncharted is an unexpected blast. It's consistent but will likely go down in history as little more than a competent adaptation, but as a lifelong fan of the series I think that’s enough. Tom Holland is an excellent Nathan Drake, while Mark Wahlberg even manages to claw back some ground lost in the opening act as Victor Sullivan in the film’s latter stages.
I only wish it distanced itself from the games a little more, since so much of the film feels like we're retreading old ground purely for the sake of it. With the ending teasing a sequel, it needs to afford itself a little more ambition. Greatness from small beginnings and all that.
We were invited to a screening by Sony Pictures for the purpose of this review.
