Here’s my Uncharted review which stars Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle and is directed by Ruben Fleischer! The film is released locally through Columbia Pictures!

Mark Wahlberg stars as Victor “Sully” Sullivan and Tom Holland is Nathan Drake in Columbia Pictures’ UNCHARTED. Photo by: Clay Enos

Now before we proceed, we may have to deal with spoilers here so SPOILER ALERT

In case you’re not aware what this action-adventure film is, this was based on the popular game titled Uncharted from Naughty Dog which has spawned at least four main installments and one side story game for the Playstation 3 and the Playstation 4. It follows the adventure of Nathan Drake who goes off on global adventures to find lost civilizations and artifacts.

In the movie, Drake is played by Tom Holland fresh from his awesome role as Peter Parker in another Sony tentpole project, Spider-Man: No Way Home. In this film, he is looking for the lost treasure of Magellan and teams up with businessman and treasure hunter Victor Sullivan (Mark Walhberg) to track down the lost treasure and maybe even find Nate’s long lost brother. In their quest to get information, they have to steal from businessman Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) who will stop at nothing to get his “birthright” back with the help of his enforcer Braddock (Tatti Gabrielle) who also has former ties to Sully. They also team up with Chloe Frazer, an independent treasure hunter who Drake takes a liking to.

Overall, the movie is incredible although it suffers from the usual action movie and Hollywood tropes like starting from the middle of the action and then working our way back from the start. I find it a bit lazy but the game does that A LOT. So you can’t fault the team if they want to be faithful to the source material.

Holland is a great actor who is known to do his own stunts and that’s definitely the case here. He’s obviously learned a thing or two from playing Spider-Man in the past three Spidey movies which makes him a capable actor. One concern I have though is sometimes while looking at him onscreen he really looks like a CGI character talking to real people. Like there were scenes in the Spain section that I thought I saw a CGI version of the British actor.

Still he was totally his take on Nathan Drake was fun. Also there are people who think that he’s a little too young to play the main character but I digress. I think he’s the perfect age for this because this means he could do a lot more installments for the film franchise and at the same time rake in more viewers and money for the studio.

There’s really nothing significant with Mark Wahlberg here. Just like all the Uncharted reviews out there whether online or in video format, he’s just there doing Marky Mark things under the alias “Victor Sullivan”. He’s still fun to watch especially interacting with Tom Holland.

I just wished they just stuck Sully’s trademark moustache from the very beginning. I don’t know what the hell they thought of ditching that awesome awesome ‘stache till the film’s credits. I’m also confused whether I should applaud the lack of blood here or not but one baddie’s surprise death would have been more chilling hand it not been for that PG-13 rating.

Visually speaking the film’s pretty good. From the opening action sequence including the falling to that insane CGI heavy aerial boat and helicopter chase. It kind of gets tiring but you’ll still love it. I also loved those “National Treasure” and “Indiana Jones” feels laid out throughout the movie. Like that scene with the trap and Sully having to fight with a much younger and more agile Braddock.

But man I found myself smiling at that climatic set piece. It’s so absurb and so implausible that its so good.

The Ladies in the film were also good. I liked Sophia Ali’s take as Chloe Frazer although it still needs improvement because the game version of her character is a lot more complex and more flawed but I understand that they had to juggle a lot of elements here. Also there’s no big pay off for her double cross. Would have been cool if they actually added some epilogue for her character arc in the film.

As for Tati Gabrielle’s Braddock, she was interesting but didn’t have enough material to make her stand out. Wish they made her and Antonio Banderas’ characters more but alas, we again get 2 Dimensional villains…

I did take it personal when they decided to make up new places here in the Philippines for the setting of the third act. So the thing is they really were supposed to shoot in the Philippines but the pandemic and the subsequent global lockdown made it impossible to shoot scenes. So they either shot the scenes on a sound stage and just CGI’ed the hell out of everything. That’s totally fine but as a Pinoy, I know for a fact that shooting on location would have been better.

Also where the hell are the places they mentioned? They didn’t even name drop Cebu which was where Ferdinand Magellan fell at the hands of Datu Lapu-Lapu and his army. That was so off for me being a history enthusiasts but I guess they were trying to avoid legal ramifications I guess?

Uncharted Review – Verdict

8/10

I really enjoyed Uncharted and I definitely want to see more adventures. Wouldn’t hurt though if they thought beyond what the game because I feel it would eventually drag them down rather than lift them up. But seeing how the Uncharted post-credit scene was teasing then it could be that they would still get A LOT of stuff from “A Thief’s End”.

Also wanted to plug a current promo that Philips Monitor is doing with Uncharted. Consumers who pick up select Philips gaming monitors get the chance to bring home two movie passes or the Playstation 5 version of Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves collection. Click HERE to find out more.

What did you think of Uncharted? Leave a comment below and follow me on Twitter at @thefanboyseo for more geek news and updates!