Nathan Drake gets a live adaptation and it falls flat on its face until the final 10-15 minutes. Here’s our Uncharted review.
Treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan recruits street-smart Nathan Drake to help him recover a 500-year-old lost fortune amassed by explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
What starts out as a heist soon becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Santiago Moncada can get his hands on it.
If Sully and Nate can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure — but only if they can learn to work together.
A video game to movie adaptation is no easy feat but Uncharted completely ignores the fundamentals of what a video game remake should include.
Once the cast was released for this movie video game fans were in uproar that Tom Holland was too young to play Nathan Drake and Mark Wahlberg was too young to play Sully with Wahlberg (along with Nathan Fillion) being shoe-ins for the Nathan Drake role.
We find out that this particular Uncharted story is an origins story (of sorts) that whilst has some winks and nods to the game basically falls flat on its arse trying to be a Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones clone without the key elements that made them watchable.
With puzzles that don’t really grab your attention, mundane dialogue and huge plot holes Uncharted is a hot mess.
The beautiful comedic delivery of Nathan Drake is absolutely non-existent as Tom Holland is certainly out of his depth here resorting to taking off his T-Shirt enough times to keep his admirers occupied but failing horribly in every other department.
Wahlberg just looks like he’s there for a paycheque and it all feels so clunky and ridiculous.
Uncharted is a film of exploration, fight sequences and comedic banter between friends on their adventures. We get absolutely none of that here with minimal travel or exploration, very little fight sequences except an amazing end of film fight scene and zero banter of sorts until the last few scenes.
The film is nearly two hours long and only starts to feel like an Uncharted movie in the last 15 minutes with some insane stunt fighting and moves taken straight from the game.
It’s a CGI whirlwind that defies logic with banter and kickass moves and in that very moment does it feel even remotely close to the games.
Without knowing the title of the movie you’d have absolutely no idea that this film is linked to the games in any way shape or form by watching the scenes onscreen.
It’s a young Nathan Drake and the ending left the door open for a sequel and hopefully an older, more mature and more true to the game casting.
There’s only so much double-crossing one film can endure and not only did I have to endure the film on-screen but the numerous idiots talking in the cinema from start to finish with quite a few audience members walking out.
It certainly wasn’t THAT bad but I can certainly see where they’re coming from as the film just drags and drags with no real heart or grip.
Things don’t make much sense, plot points are either rushed or thrown away and as a huge fan of the game I’m disappointed that a film like this was made.
Such a wasted opportunity.
Uncharted review by Sean Evans
Our Rating
Summary
A wasted opportunity all around as a badly miscast group of actors try to salvage a movie from a bad script, numerous plot holes and quite the dull outing that strips away all of the aspects that made the game so memorable.
This film saves itself in the final 15 minutes and gives us hope that a sequel could be a much more improved experience but hopefully with a different cast and a script less lazily written.
