Uncharted film review: 'It gets you from A to B with a smile on your face'

Hucknall based writer and film enthusiast Nick Archer reviews another blockbuster, this week he gives his verdict on Uncharted.

If you haven't yet read his review of Death on the Nile from last week that can be viewed here.

"Well that was as ridiculous as I expected", says Uncharted villain Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) to Sully (Mark Wahlberg) in the opening 20 minutes.

My thoughts exactly, and yet, by the time we're treated to a mid-credit scene, against my better judgement, I am almost won round.

Uncharted charts the origins of adventure thief Nathan Drake, descendent of Sir Francis Drake, as he meets mentor Victor 'Sully'' Sullivan to follow the clues left by Nathan's estranged brother, Sam. Tom Holland swaps the spiderweb spandex for a pair of hiking boots to parkour his around the globe searching for Magellan's lost treasure.

Video games are notoriously difficult to adapt to the big screen. Infamously notable attempts range from Super Mario Brother to the various Tomb Raiders, with rare critical acclaim. This time game developers Naughty Dog have teamed up with Playstation Productions and Columbia Pictures to turn the wild global success of the Uncharted game's franchise into the sort of box office gold Drake himself might covet.

To this end, it's exactly what you might expect. A predictable, paint-by-numbers script and clumsy character introductions are presented in the structure reflective of the games; an action-packed hook scene, followed by a flashback and then dropping us into the present day, only this time we're watching rather than playing. The issue is that you can get away with certain narrative clunkiness in video games that you simply can't in film because we're a passive rather than interactive participants in the story. The film doesn't seem to quite understand this, and you find your eyebrow raising as lots of exposition is thrown at you very quickly. A smattering of smart-ass quips and some entertaining action sequences do however start to win you over.

All things considered, the film is in decent hands. Director Ruben Fleischer knows his way around the action-comedy blockbuster. Zombieland and Venom, as well as their respective sequels, were relative hits at the theatres and home, and Fleischer takes his flair for taking the absurd and making it watchable to this new franchise. Uncharted is very entertaining, once the clunky first act is out of the way you're on board with the concept. It takes all the historical adventuring of an Indiana Jones (Including borrowed lines such as 'Nuns… why did it have to be nuns?'), throws in some cheesy bro-chemistry between Holland and Wahlberg and their photo-father/son or light-fingered Jedi/Padawan dynamic, and some insane action sequences.

This is where this film does excel in borrowing some ideas from the games. The opening scene is a flashforward to the high-octane insanity of Drake tumbling from a cargo plane, leaping from falling crate to falling crate, only to be hit by a car. No spoilers, you've seen the trailer, right? I will however keep schtum on the finale, and only say that the climactic action sequence could only have been realised by people who perhaps forgot whether it was a movie they were making or a video game.

In terms of story, it is not nearly as gripping or well-told as the strongest games in the series (Uncharted 2 and 4, in my humble opinion), and doesn't feature nearly as much trademark free-climbing and parkour as I might have hoped for, but it gets you from A to B with a smile on your face.

If you're a fan of the games, you'll appreciate the effort and enjoy all the nods to the source material, including a tasteful cameo by voice actor Nolan North. Coming to the franchise with fresh eyes, you'll certainly get kick out of all the brash, noisy, insane fun that Uncharted throws at you.

Uncharted is still being screened at The Arc Cinema in Hucknall over the next few days. For details of timings, see here.