Worse, his performance feels tossed-off, which is also true of Holland’s leading-man routine. Uncharted strives to keep Sully’s good/evil nature in question until its climax, yet Wahlberg doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain, his turn too good-humored to sell the idea that Sully might actually be a nefarious villain. Central to locating that plunder are two crosses that function as keys, one of which is at an auction that Nathan and Sully crash, and the other is in the possession of Chloe (Sophia Ali), a former Sully ally who cautions Nathan against trusting his new comrade. Thus begins an odyssey that pits Nathan and Sully against Santiago Moncada ( Antonio Banderas), a member of the very family that Magellan betrayed centuries earlier, and a ruthless businessman who hungrily covets the gold. Regardless, the film has the feel of a rushed patchwork job, which also extends to the banter shared by a grown Nathan and his unlikely partner-in-crime, Sully ( Mark Wahlberg), their repartee straining mightily to generate both humor and a larger sense of their combative camaraderie. It’s possible, of course, that such details were simply left on the cutting room floor. Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway’s script obscures plot holes via speed, keeping things moving quickly in an attempt to prevent moviegoers from thinking about sketchy developments, such as Nathan’s third-act procurement-out of the clear blue sky-of a speedboat that’s vital to accomplishing his mission. Yet as with quite a few other narrative elements in Uncharted, it winds up being largely superfluous. On his way out a bedroom window, Sam gives Nathan a ring attached to a necklace that boasts their ancestor Sir Frances Drake’s motto, “Sic Parvis Magna” (translation: “Greatness From Small Beginnings”). Steven Soderbergh on Superhero Movies’ Stunning Lack of Sex and What ‘Contagion’ Got Wrong Sam and Nathan share a dream of finding that loot, but it’s not to be-at least for a while, since once they’re caught by authorities, Sam is booted from the orphanage where they live and, rather than face legal justice, runs away for parts unknown. Before that death-defying predicament can come to a conclusion, however, Fleischer’s film leaps backwards in time to recount the efforts of young Nathan (Tiernan Jones) and his beloved older brother Sam (Rudy Pankow) to steal a museum treasure map that pinpoints the route Magellan took when he discovered, and then hid, a priceless bounty of gold. Uncharted begins with a bang, picking up with Nathan Drake (Holland) as he dangles by the foot from one of many tethered-together cargo units that are fluttering in the wind behind a giant plane-a showstopper that directly recalls the memorable centerpiece of Uncharted 3: Drake’s Fortune. Like its source material, it’s been modeled after far more illustrious predecessors, the problem being that without the platformer’s interactivity, what’s left is merely a collection of clichés in search of a novel spark. Fourteen years later, the fruits of that labor are meager, as Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer’s action-adventure is a by-the-books treasure-hunting lark that’s been done a million times before and is headlined by a miscast Tom Holland. The case of a film inspiring a video game giving birth to another film, Uncharted is an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s excellent Indiana Jones-esque PlayStation series that arrives in theaters following a torturously long development process that began back in 2008.
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