Uncharted – Film Review

Treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) recruits street-smart Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) 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.

At this point, it’s basically just a known thing that video game to movie adaptations almost always suck a heck of a lot. Seriously – ask any regular moviegoer if they like any game-to-film adaptation and I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of them are going to say a resounding “no”, and you can’t really blame them. The original run of Mortal Kombat movies were abysmally bad and were basically slaps in the face to those who loved the games, DOA: Dead or Alive comes across like an adult film, and almost every single Resident Evil movie is headache-inducing.

What’s up with all of these video game-to-film adaptations being so bad? The only one that was truly fantastic, in my opinion, was Roar Uthaug‘s Tomb Raider from 2018, starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft. Was it perfect? Absolutely not, but it was still a highly enjoyable adventure film with great central performances and fun action. These movies have a track record of being awful, though, which was why I was terrified to see Ruben Fleischer‘s Uncharted movie.

Growing up as a gamer as far back as I can remember, the Uncharted video game series was basically a staple for me. My brother showed me him playing the first game in the series back when I was about ten years old and I remember being completely blown away by what I was looking at. A few years later, I ended up playing the three games in the franchise that were out at the time and falling in love with them. Also, just to note, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is one of my favorite video games ever made.

So yes, I was worried about an Uncharted movie directed by the same guy that did Venom. Yikes. But, in a jaw-dropping surprise, Uncharted is an absolute blast from start to finish. It is without question the greatest video game-to-movie adaptation ever made, and one that has plenty of things to enjoy for everyone. Are you a massive fan of the games like me? You’ll love this movie. Are you just a casual moviegoer who has never played the games even once? You will still love this movie.

Uncharted is a stylish, fast-paced, deeply hilarious, and action-heavy adventure film that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to delivering on the emotional side of things too. When our lead protagonist Nathan was a young boy, his older brother Sam left to go on to greater things, promising that one day they would meet again. Sam was a big treasure hunter, and together, the two brothers loved exploring the world and seeing the wonders that it all has to offer.

But Nathan’s an adult now and his brother is nowhere to be found. He wants to find him more than anything else – a huge trunk full of gold is not the biggest treasure he could find. Finding his brother would be Nate’s big payday. This is where Uncharted gets seriously strong with its character development. Nate isn’t just some super agile guy with an itch for money – he is a multi-layered character, and one that you’ll be rooting for all the way until the very end.

Tom Holland was an excellent choice to portray this character at the end of the day – something that left me quite shocked, to say the least. I am a massive fan of Holland’s, but I never would have thought he would do a good job in the role of Nathan Drake. There are some distinct qualities about Nate in the games that Holland just didn’t seem to have, but I am more than happy to admit that I was wrong. Here, Holland has truly never been more charming and endearing. He’s hilarious when he needs to be, street-smart, and a complete badass to boot.

When it comes to Mark Wahlberg as Sully… I’m still not really a fan. Wahlberg is actually surprisingly decent here, and the chemistry that he shares with Holland is absolutely electric, but he just doesn’t feel like the Sully I know and love from the games. When watching Uncharted, I didn’t feel like I was watching Nate and Sully together, but rather, Nate and Mark Wahlberg. It was a little disheartening.

Obviously, there are going to be heaps and bounds of people who are going to see this movie simply to satisfy their itch for some action, and if you’re one of those people, then you’re in luck. Uncharted is filled to the brim with some of the best action sequences I have seen in a long time. A lot of these scenes are close-up fistfights, and every single time a punch lands, it feels brutal. Of course, since this movie is rated PG-13, we don’t really see any blood in the movie and nobody gets shot on-camera, but whenever there are some fistfights, they all feel so visceral.

And don’t even get me started about the beautiful plane sequence. Watching this movie in 4Dx felt like I was actually falling out of the plane with Nate. Scary? Absolutely. But it was also just a ton of fun. The team that worked on this film deserves so much praise for holding nothing back and doing everything in their power to satisfy both Uncharted game fans and casual moviegoers alike. They did a fantastic job.

Is Uncharted a masterpiece? No, absolutely not. Very far from it. The film has a hilariously bad villain that gets criminally underused. Sometimes, characters will do things that don’t make sense, and there are some plot holes to be found here. But at the end of the day, I was immensely surprised by just how much these flaws didn’t detract from the film as a whole. Uncharted is a highly entertaining adventure filled with plenty of great action, hilarious jokes, and wonderful chemistry between Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg.