Sony’s feature film “Uncharted” may have its origins in a PlayStation game, but the real inspiration comes from a more analog source: jet-setting adventure flicks of decades past. The film’s script, the product of six credited writers, feels like a “frankensteined” effort of unrealized sequels to series such as “Indiana Jones” or “National Treasure.” Like the figures portrayed on screen, there’s a grail just evading their grasp. But unlike the characters, the film itself never recaptures that elusive glory.
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“Uncharted” gets quite the assist from casting two actors with well-known personas that can help fill in the gaps of their thinly-sketched characters. Tom Holland takes the lead as Henley-clad hero Nathan “Nate” Drake, an orphaned bartender (and erstwhile petty thief) summoned to an adventurous quest by the mere prospect of reuniting with his disappeared brother. This nebulous fraternal trauma is but the faintest of motivations propelling Nate forward, but in the hands of a skillful star like Holland, that matters little. He’s got the guilelessness of the “boy next door” archetype down to a science, leveraging the hopeful innocence of his appearance and attitude to gain immediate sympathy.
Holland’s pairing with Mark Wahlberg as Victor “Sully” Sullivan, a treasure hunter interested in fortune over friendship, makes sense on paper. The charm of his Spider-Man derived primarily from foiling him against Robert Downey, Jr.’s jaded Iron Man. Holland’s innate sweetness hit all the harder when seen directly opposite the alternative of cynicism. But “Uncharted,” asks him to go toe-to-toe with Wahlberg in smarm as the two men bicker across the globe in pursuit of treasure in Ferdinand Magellan’s lost ship. Throwing barbs feels anathema to Holland’s earnestness, and he never quite feels comfortable delivering the film’s over-workshopped zingers. (Luckily, Holland gets more to do than simply riding sidecar to the burly Bostonian.)
Simply placing Holland and Wahlberg in the same film presents an interesting generational narrative. Both hail from disciplines that some regard as less masculine – Holland from theater and dance, Wahlberg from modeling — and have sought to establish their machismo in rugged action films such as these. Yet “Uncharted” chooses to extinguish any sparks that could be generated from the friction of their meta-narratives, always opting for the safest and blandest route toward its inevitable conclusion. Every line feels as if it had to pass a corporate committee vote, leaving the actors little to deliver beyond exposition and the occasional off-handed wisecrack.
What “Uncharted” does not seem to understand about the best adventure films is that action set-pieces alone do not make for an exhilarating journey. It’s as much about the little interstitial bits that come in between, those revealing moments when the audience can realize the ordinariness of characters pulling off the extraordinary. When sanitized down to the barest minimum of component parts, there’s something lost — even if said parts are supersized and infused with adrenaline. And without well-defined characters, the emptiness of a quest for a MacGuffin becomes all the more pronounced.
“Uncharted” does succumb to that bombastic vice of the blockbuster class: a glut of CGI-heavy action sequences in its final act. But even before giving in to what it studiously avoids, the grounded action spectacle that precedes the pixelated pile-ups does not compensate for the film’s other shortcomings. It can’t even lean on secondary elements to help erase this deficit – Antonio Banderas sleepwalks through his scenes as baddie Santiago Moncada; the cityscapes and topography of the travelogue have no character; there’s not even the slightest hint of chemistry or heat between Holland and Sophia Ali’s cunning companion Chloe Frazer.
It’s to the immense credit of director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland,” “Venom”) that “Uncharted” remains a modestly engaging and entertaining watch even despite these flaws. It’s cud that at least contains some discernible traces of the previously digested product. Fleischer channels the tenor of the influences his film wears on its sleeve: the manipulative music demanding awe, the lighthearted spirit of the action, the smirking star-power needed to sell quippy banter. But his tonal fidelity cannot entirely cover the seams of this sloppily assembled script. Nor can it disguise the film’s feeble fealty to franchises whose footsteps it fails to follow. [C]