Main cast: Tom Holland (Nathan Drake), Mark Wahlberg (Victor Sullivan), Sophia Ali (Chloe Frazer), Tati Gabrielle (Braddock), Rudy Pankow (Samuel Drake), and Antonio Banderas (Santiago Moncada)
Director: Ruben Fleischer
When I think of Nathan Drake, I don’t think of Tom Holland. To be fair, I don’t think of that character much at all. I think I may be one of the very few people that don’t really care for the Uncharted series of video games, because I personally find the lead character insufferable, hypocritical, and smug. Because of his plot armor, he is never going to get any comeuppance even when he needs one badly. The best thing about those games is Nate’s Theme, and that’s about it.
So yes, Uncharted the movie is therefore something that I go into without any baggage or expectation. Since I don’t care for the video games, I don’t particularly mind any deviation, big or small, from the game.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the plot for this one seems to be taken, with a lot of liberties, from the latest game, as Nate here as a brother as well. Nate and his older brother Sam were orphans, la di da, and then they were separated with Sam leaving Nate a ring and promising to find him again one day. Only, Sam’s in prison throughout this one, which is a good thing as that character is annoying in the game he appeared in.
So now Nate is a bounty hunter as well as bartender that picks the pockets of the folks that order a drink from him. He teams up with a more experienced fortune hunter Victor Sullivan to locate Sam, after Sam vanished while working on Sully in their previous gig.
This will pit them against Santiago Moncada, whose only crime is to want something that belongs to his family but he’s the meanie because he’s not Nathan Drake. That’s a recurring theme in the video games, by the way, which is why I can’t stand the character there. He’s the good guy because he’s pushed by the game to be that way, when he’s just a lowlife Mary Sue sleazebag that has the temerity to act like he’s better than his fellow lowlifes.
Along the way, they will meet Chloe Frazer, Nate’s will-they-won’t-they love interest, and Braddock shows up as Santiago’s sidekick. I suppose that makes her the equivalent of that useless character voiced by Laura Bailey in the latest and supposedly final Uncharted game. If that were to be the case, oh, this movie should have also brought back Warren Kole to play Rafe Adler, the best thing about that game. I do love me some Antonio Banderas especially when he’s naked, but he’s not exactly the best person to play a memorable villain.
You know, I want to say that Tom Holland is probably too young to play Nathan Drake, but that fellow is aging rapidly before his audience. He has the face of something in his thirties, so really, he’s not that miscast in the role. It makes more sense to cast him than Nolan North, the voice actor for that character in the video games, if you ask me, because Mr North isn’t a household name outside of this small group of people that follow and worship voice actors for who knows what reason, plus he’s not exactly a hot commodity now that he’s in his 50s.
Mr Holland isn’t too bad here. He drops his quips, he does his action scenes well… nothing too different from his more famous role, really, aside from the fact that he’s not slinging webs here. So yes, he does his thing competently because it’s something he has done well many times already.
He looks far more grown up here, though, so I suppose some people, ahem, can think of how nice he looks in those tight-fitting shirts and pants without feeling like some dirty old perv.
Mark Wahlberg is Mark Wahlberg, as is Antonio Banderas being Antonio Banderas, so just like Mr Holland, they are just reprising their usual roles in their usual manner here. Tati Gabrielle feels awfully miscast here, however, as she isn’t believable at all as some supposed bad-ass mercenary, while Sophia Ali doesn’t have much to do here other than to have her character tease audience with the possibility of her hooking up with Nathan. The video game Chloe, sadly, is so much more interesting that this version of Chloe.
Still, the movie is alright. It has the expected chase at an auction, many gravity-defying action scenes, fights, et cetera to be expected of a movie with the premise, and everything feels put together well. It also feels like a pretty generic by-the-numbers action movie, although I’m grateful that it doesn’t try too hard to force itself to be too woke like too many video game live action adaptations these days. It just does what it sets out to do, and does it pretty competently.
Will I remember much about this movie a week from now? I doubt it, but still, I’m still entertained by it, so all things considered, it’s alright.
Is it sacrilege to say that I like the movie Nathan Drake better than the video game one?
