Rent Uncharted (2022)

High Octane Cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond + Pirates, based on a Playstation game - Uncharted review by PV

OK so I am probably not the target audience for this. I have left school, after all. ..

But I enjoyed it for what it was - though I am glad I turned on the subtitles as the dialogue is so fast and/or mumbled and/or drowned out by the score.

It is not too long (as so many Hollywood movies are now), had some good one liners and twists.

Of course it's all very silly. Anything based on a computer game will be, after all.

But for a high octane adventure with loads of CGI students, chases, mad characters, it's fine.

So 3 stars

Bags of fun - Uncharted review by sb

Well that was bags more fun than I expected - a good old fashioned rollicking treasure adventure.

Holland plays Nate who as boy was obsessed with Spanish treasure and he is hired by Sully (Walberg) to seek out some lost gold.

This brings them into conflict with Banderas bad guy and his lethal hench lady (Gabrielle) with whom Sully has some history.

It zips from New York to Barcelona to the Phillipines picking up another of Sully's exes (Ali) along the way and the scene is set for thrills and spills and more double crosses than you can shake a stick at....

Holland is as likeable as always and Wallberg tones down his more annoying traits - Banderas isn't given much to do so its Gabrielle who becomes chief villain.

On the one hand its a blatant mish mash of various other franchises with 2 parts Raider, a bit of National Treasure and a whole side order of the follow the clues so beloved of the Robert Langdon films but it barrels along at a cracking pace and makes no bones that it is anything then the sum of its parts.

Ok it can be a little too blatant as times ( the main set piece stunt is ripped off from The Living Daylights) but caught in the right mood fun can be had - 4/5

Familiar but fun - Uncharted review by BG

We're introduced to Sam and Nathan Drake as a couple of naughty scamps who like breaking into places to look at historical artifacts. They 'might be' related to THE Sir Francis Drake according to family members - (a nice way of the scriptwriters leaving themselves a back door out of that family tie in case the backlash against Drake's ties to slavery gets worse any time soon).

Later we meet grown-up Nate (Tom Holland), who is now a bartender. He likes robbing people, but it's okay because he's charming and they look like they can probably afford it. Sully (Mark Wahlberg) then rocks up with an attractive proposition for them to steal much more, from people who can almost certainly afford it, while dangling the carrot that Nate might be able to find his missing brother.

Along the way, they team up with Chloe (Sophia Ali) who seems to exist in the script mainly to hold onto a clue and give the hormonally-ravaged Nate something to drool over.

Their adversaries are the 'obvious baddie' Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and Braddock, played by Tati Gabrielle with such serpentine theatrical menace and charisma that this must surely get her on the lists of a lot more casting agents.

The trio of heroes reel from travelogue-pretty set-piece to set-piece while attempting to solve clues, survive traps and beat their enemies, a-la Lara Croft and Indiana Jones before them - a fact the film acknowledges in a cheeky dialogue wink.

Uncharted is fully aware of what it is - an adventure movie following in the footsteps of giants, while out to have a little fun of its own. Holland's Nate Drake is likeable company with a sweet nature and a comical approach, and spends significant amounts of the film either half dressed or wet, to the degree that you wonder if it's now become contractual. Wahlberg's Sully is only saved by the actor's charisma; while fairly amusing, he spends so much of the film indulging in properly scummy behaviour and using others that it would've been a disaster in the wrong hands. You can't help suspecting that the role would've worked even better in the hands of someone more adept at wry comedy like Nathan Fillion (if I can say that without getting lynched by the fans of the Uncharted fan movie).

All the usual cliches get trotted out - the cynicism of the older partner, the hero 'saving' someone who shouldn't need that written into their role in this day and age, the cocky young hero getting in over their head...

Plot-wise, it's never better than ridiculous, and is fun as long as you can stringently resist the temptation to put it under even the slightest scrutiny. Otherwise everything - and I really do mean pretty much EVERYTHING in the storyline comes tumbling down. A 'hidden' location that has a modern street grille above it, so should've been found by the workmen installing it decades ago...the location of the final treasure which could (and should) have been found by dozens of tourists from 2 different directions. The softest precious metal in the world suddenly becoming as great at stopping high-velocity bullets as a kevlar vest (and REALLY light!). The film has a problem with weight in general, and anybody with the slightest knowledge of flight, archaeology, history, water, old transport, new transport, or indeed gravity, will have to swallow ALL the disbelief for a finale that would've killed everybody involved three times over before it even gets halfway.

If you can manage that (and I don't mean that facetiously, it really is worth trying) you will have a lot of fun with what is easily one of the silliest light-hearted adventure romps in years.

An A-list cast carrying out barmy stunts in beautiful locations with some degree of feelgood factor? It's worth the effort.