‘Uncharted’ movie review: Plastic video game affair

A delightful performance by Tom Holland, and glittering locations including Alicante, Valencia and Barcelona, can’t make up for the bland CGI stunts

It is soulless, stuffed with pointless CGI and criminally derivative. While all this is true of  Uncharted, based on the stupendously-popular game, on the plus side is a delightful performance by Tom Holland as Nate Drake, glittering locations including Alicante, Valencia, Xàbia and Barcelona, secret messages written in invisible ink and postcards.

There is something so romantic about postcards; it is almost up there with that animal-hide covered old explorer’s notebook full of post its and whatnots, and dark, medieval maps with squiggly lines and involved pictures of monsters lurking in the deep.

Nate and brother Sam, ancestors of the original Indiana Jones, Sir Francis Drake, dream of getting their hands on Magellan’s great treasure — the theory is he did not circumnavigate the globe for fun but for gold. His trip was financed by the rich and powerful Moncada family. Magellan died before completing his journey. His captain and 17 crew members found the treasure and completed the circumnavigation.

Sam leaves 10-year-old Nate behind with a promise to return for him. 15 years later, Nate is a bartender doing small time hustles when he is approached by veteran treasure hunter Sully (Mark Wahlberg), who claims to have worked with Sam, and needs Nate’s help to get Magellan’s treasure. There is an auction, (and a chance for everyone to dress up), a scary mercenary called Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) with a henchman who speaks in a super-thick Scottish accent, and the last of Moncada clan (Antonio Banderas) doing various sorts of evil. 

The treasure hunters repair to Spain to find a church and a vault, with a pair of golden crosses which are actually keys, and a map where X might mark the spot. Nate and Sully catch up with Chloe (Sophia Ali) in Spain and they solve 500-year-old mysteries on the run like all good tomb raiders in popular culture.

Some of the stunts are suitably jaw-dropping, including the opening sequence where there is much fighting as people, crates and a lovely car fall out of a plane and the mid-air ramming of 500-year-old ships. CGI, however, has rendered all stunts bland. The sky was never the limit for imagination, so wonder why CGI renders everything plastic.

There is the mandatory mid and end-credit sequence indicating sequels where Nate and Sully might run into the crew from Red Notice. While one would have expected more creativity from director Ruben Fleischer, who helmed the delightful  Zombieland,  Uncharted is a tolerable way to spend time at the movies.