Uncharted (2022)
Directed by Ruben Fleischer
A young street-smart, Nathan Drake and his wisecracking partner Victor “Sully” Sullivan embark on a dangerous pursuit of “the greatest treasure never found” while also tracking clues that may lead to Nathan’s long-lost brother.
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What critics say influenced Uncharted
Uncharted is at least spiritually faithful to the games and makes for a decent bit of matinee fun in the vein of National Treasure or 1999’s The Mummy , but without the controller in your hand, it lacks the magic ingredient that makes it so special.
“Cherry” and “Chaos Walking” were disasters for Holland and considering “Uncharted” is passively watchable thanks to its gritty “Sahara” meets “National Treasure” vibes, it’s already one of the better video game adaptations by default because it at least tries to have fun even if you’d rather go home and play the games instead.
The action, which recalls the National Treasure films and openly name-checks Indiana Jones, takes place for a while under the streets of Barcelona, where the two keys are needed to access centuries-old locations that then point the way to additional locations.
However, the film struggles to develop meaningful character depth and emotional complexity amid its barrage of elaborate globetrotting set pieces that are its very reason for existence — settling for a standard-issue buddy comedy in the vein of the National Treasure or, um, Tomb Raider franchises.
It’s goofy and completely nonsensical, but it’s also a funny and thrilling adventure akin to The Mummy , the Jumanji films and National Treasure.
It’s a personality-free jumble of Indiana Jones, James Bond, National Treasure , The Da Vinci Code , and the more obnoxious Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels, serving up less inspired variations on fights, stunts, and clues you’ve seen before… minus all the distinct fun of navigating them yourself.
It doesn’t match the visual luster of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1980) nor the slapdash lows of Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers (2011), but it gets the job done.
Rather than lean into the over-the-top bombast of it all, Fleischer apes instead from Tomb Raider, The Goonies, and – most of all – Raiders of the Lost Ark but with no style to call his own.
However, unlike FAST AND FURIOUS, or more to the point, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (a clear point of inspiration here, even though this is contemporary), UNCHARTED doesn’t know how to make us care for its characters.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on.
It cribs liberally from action movies ranging from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Pirates of the Caribbean" but has more in common with the recent "Red Notice" in the way it tosses a few stars together and then hopes for great things to materialize.
Based on the popular video game series (which somewhat dooms it from the start) and directed by Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”), the vanilla action adventure (★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Friday) is an Indiana Jones knockoff that pretty much misses everything “Raiders of the Lost Ark" did well.
Like Tomb Raider before it (and Indiana Jones before that), Uncharted borrows heavily from the adventure serials of the Thirties, digging deep into the romantic traditions of discovery and exoticised wanderlust.
However, the film struggles to develop meaningful character depth and emotional complexity amid its barrage of elaborate globetrotting set pieces that are its very reason for existence — settling for a standard-issue buddy comedy in the vein of the National Treasure or, um, Tomb Raider franchises.
“Uncharted” mixes and matches the adventure elements of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Tomb Raider” and “National Treasure” into a generic action movie that loses its way early on.
It remains to be seen whether Uncharted will work with those who are more devoted fans of the games than I am but, from a purely cinematic perspective, it’s an enjoyable adaptation in the vein of the surprisingly entertaining Alicia Vikander-led take on Tomb Raider which surfaced in 2018.
Like an alarming amount of recent video game movies — "Tomb Raider," "Mortal Kombat," etc. — "Uncharted" has decided to go the prequel route with its protagonist, aging down Nathan Drake to a twentysomething Holland, who still seems to be too young to be playing an orphaned bartender-turned-treasure hunter.
As for Wahlberg, he certainly still has a youthful physique and energy to match, but he’s not exactly a charismatic action star like Tom Cruise who’s electrifying to watch in those Mission Impossible movies.
Nathan hooks up with Sully in New York City, where the former is working as a bartender, impressing hotties with moves straight out of Cocktail—a nod that, along with the Mission: Impossible-style daredevil opener, suggests some wannabe-Tom Cruise energy.
Similar stunts in, say, the "Mission: Impossible" movies are at least somewhat tethered to reality, or at least the version of the reality the films have created, where "Uncharted" never seems any more real than the video game series on which it's based.
For every Mission: Impossible sequel where Tom Cruise actually straps himself to an airborne plane, we can have one Uncharted, where the camera moves just fast enough to make the CGI never too egregious.
The action sequences are similarly tame, but for one death-defying skydive out of a cargo plane that is composed almost entirely of goopy CGI and is many steps removed from the thrillingly real stunt work of a Mission: Impossible movie.
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Tom Holland reminds us of his versatility and inherent likability as he slips into the role of Nathan, a gymnastically inclined (hey!), street-smart hustler and bartender who’s pulling off some Tom Cruise-in-“Cocktail” level tricks behind the bar while working his pickpocket game on the upscale clientele.
Nathan turns into Tom Holland, working as a bartender in a trendy NYC joint (Holland swipes some of Tom Cruise’s “Cocktail” moves) but engaging in pickpocketing on the side.
They would be perfect in a remake of 1988’s Tom Cruise/Bryan Brown drama “Cocktail.”
We first saw him working as a bartender and knows a thing or two about flair bartending as if he’s pulling Tom Cruise’s Brian Flanagan in Cocktail (1988).
At any rate that may explain the images of his character, Nate Drake, a thief who moonlights as a bartender (or vice versa), pulling some smooth moves on the job, a bit of juggling tomfoolery that instantly triggers images of Cruise in “Cocktail.”
There’s even a touch of the Tom Cruise classic "Cocktail" in there too.
Rather than lean into the over-the-top bombast of it all, Fleischer apes instead from Tomb Raider, The Goonies, and – most of all – Raiders of the Lost Ark but with no style to call his own.
But aside from a couple of predictable twists in allegiance, the script (by Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway) does relatively little with that idea, in part because the story feels like it has been cobbled together from snippets of more accomplished movies: A little Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure here, a little Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The Goonies there.
However cynical one could become toward the prospect of another breed of Romancing the Stone (1984), The Goonies (1985), or National Treasure (2004), Uncharted defies all odds, despite its gaming origins.
It also mimics 1985's The Goonies at moments but does so in a much more serious manner.
“Uncharted,” a new movie based on the PlayStation video game, cribs heavily from adventures like “The Goonies” and its holy grail, “Indiana Jones.”
As a fan, I can’t help but think of personal favorites like Aladdin (1992), The Mummy (1999), National Treasure (2004), Indiana Jones (first three), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl , The Goonies , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , and The Da Vinci Code .
Performance-wise, Holland is fit as hell and game for anything, but Nathan’s vocal expressions and mannerisms too often evoke Peter Parker and comparisons to Spiderman .
Holland is 25 years old but still presents on-screen as an overeager teenager, recalling his work in the Spider-Man films; every line is delivered as an anguished yelp or a pleading sigh.
It’s hard to shake off the feeling that I’m watching him acting all witty and boyishly reckless like Peter Parker in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was only released two months ago in December last year.
As much as Holland tries to inject some fun into his Nate character, Holland is just doing an older version of the teenage Peter Parker character that he plays in the “Spider-Man” movies.
“Uncharted” is part of the valiant effort to make a bona fide star out of Tom Holland separate from his extremely popular “Spider-Man” movies.
Somewhere lurking within Uncharted is a flicker of romance, but unlike Holland’s Spider-Man extravaganzas, Fleischer’s film can’t be bothered to humanize its characters with anything approaching engaging emotions or relations; the sole thing that matters is racing from one subterranean catacomb and buried cave to the next, the action punctuated by a few dull quips and some brooding over MIA relatives.
In a scene with strong echoes of the Danny-recruits-Linus opener from “Ocean’s Eleven,” the mysterious Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) pays a visit to Nathan at the bar and tells him if he’d like to take a big step up from copping jewelry and go on a REAL adventure, look him up.
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Uncharted doesn’t exactly chart a new territory in the action adventure genre, in fact it’s basically a variation of the franchise movies I’ve mentioned, combined with the preposterousness of the Fast & Furious flicks.
The “Fast & Furious” films are probably to blame, or thank, for the propensity of today’s action films to stretch toward increasingly absurd heights.
With a pair of bejeweled crucifixes literally symbolizing all the double-crossing that transpires along this convoluted journey, Nathan and Sully get into all sorts of death-defying, CGI-requiring, green-screen-heavy adventures, ranging from the slick and relatively grounded to airborne stuff straight out of one of the more ludicrous (or should we say Ludacris) “Fast & Furious” adventures.
Set pieces are so hectic and slathered in CGI that you’d eventually trade a Spanish galleon full of gold for a single clear wide shot, which is all the more frustrating because the film’s small handful of action sequences are conceived with more imagination than any recent “Fast & Furious” movie has been able to muster.
And knowing that audiences are now all too ready to accept gravity-defying, belief-suspended set-pieces, Fleischer has crafted some ridiculously entertaining spectacles within that more than owe their execution to the gradual insanity of the Fast & Furious series; the climactic sequence which features pirate ships being carried over oceans and throughout island structures by attached helicopters is truly a wild ride.
Yet here, for all the money hosed into the production, there’s a surprising lack of zest, even an uncertainty about tone, going from National Treasure to Fast & Furious in the blink of an edit.
Since it is based on a video game, Uncharted overcomes the stigma of Super Mario Bros. and Prince of Persia to set a high score among adaptations.