The popular Naughty Dog video game series hits the big screen with Uncharted. Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is a bartender and petty thief, who is recruited by Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), a treasure hunter who once worked with Nathan's long-lost brother Sam (Rudy Pankow). Sully wants Nathan's help to locate a stash of gold hidden by Ferdinand Magellan. They are joined on this adventure by Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali) and three have to outrun rival treasure hunter Jo Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) and her financier Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas).
Uncharted is a film directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom), based on the series of PlayStation video games developed by the studio Naughty Dog. This film version of Uncharted acts as a prequel of sorts to the games, as it introduces a younger version of protagonist Nathan Drake and his first treasure hunting adventure with Victor “Sully” Sullivan. Nathan and Sully travel to Barcellona to search for clues to the lost treasure of Ferdinand Magellan. However, the treasure is also desired by Santiago Moncada, whose family funded the Magellan expedition 500 years ago, and Moncada hires the vicious mercenary Jo Braddock to get the job done.
Having not played a single game in the Uncharted video game series, I was able to view this film adaptation for what it is, which is an Indiana Jones-like adventure film. In this regard, it is no worse than the Tomb Raider films, particularly the recent 2018 reboot. The film has characters finding ancient tombs under city streets and travelling to exotic locations looking for treasure, with the occasion high-octane action scene thrown in for good measure. This includes the setpiece that is arguably the centrepiece of Uncharted, where Nathan Drake is fighting off thugs while freefalling from a cargo plane.
Arguably, the most controversial of this Uncharted film is the casting. For years. the fan pick to play the role of Nathan Drake was Nathan Fillion and indeed Fillion got the chance to play the role in a well-received 2018 fan film directed by Allan Ungar and co-starring Stephen Lang as Sully1. However, Sony and Naughty Dog clearly wanted to go in a different direction with their film adaptation of Uncharted, casting Tom Holland (still best known as the MCU's Spider-Man) as a much younger Nathan Drake, joined by Mark Wahlberg as an equally younger (and much less mustachioed) Sully.
That all said, I don't have any personal attachment to the Uncharted video games, so I have no purist thoughts on the end result. Overall, I would say that Uncharted ends up being a fine enough escapist adventure film.
Trailer for Uncharted
