Review: Uncharted

Before I begin my review, I must first state that I have never played any of the Uncharted games. So I am basing this review purely on the film.

The only thing I know about the Uncharted series is that it is adventure based and kind of a modern day Indiana Jones.

That alone should intrigue me and plenty of others. However with the film being based on a video game, you can't help but me naturally cautious due to the history of films of this genre.

Historically films based off a video game have done pretty badly both critically and financially. However, recent years have shown some promise with the likes of 'Warcraft: The Beginning', 'Pokemon: Detective Pikachu', 'Sonic The Hedgehog' and a few more doing surprisingly well. So I was going in with some excitement.

The introduction provided some intriguing set-up and character building that certainly gave me the feeling of a fun modern adventure story with historic connections. The structure was as you would expect with plots of this genre and the character chemistry had seeing a lot of potential with this.

However, there were clear issues that let itself down. The script is pretty poor. It felt very basic, not many of the comedic moments felt natural and it managed to downgrade a good amount of the performances.

But I think the general flow of the story and the creativity of the action sequences kept me engaged and gave me belief that there is a really good franchise in here.

Tom Holland was a solid. He continues to show that natural charisma he has and felt like a believable lead for this type of story. Mark Wahlberg was surprisingly disappointing. He did the usual Wahlberg shtick. But it felt like he was almost sleep-walking through his performance. It might be due to the script that I was unimpressed with, as the dialogue he was given was incredibly unmemorable. Sophia Ali was nice support with Holland and Wahlberg and gave us a nice little trinity of protagonists.

It was nice to see Antonio Banderas still get roles in major studio projects. But I think like with Wahlberg, he wasn't given much quality to work with.

The only other notable performance that I would like to mention is Tati Gabrielle. It was more of a physical performance for Gabrielle and showed some great promise for future projects.

From a technical side, I felt the visual effects blended in well with the multiple locations that the film was shot in. Plus, the general look of it felt perfectly fine and pleasing enough to never feel over digitalised which gave it a solid amount of authenticity.

Along with the script, another notable drawback was some the pacing. There was a lot of lingering in several scenes that felt awkward and ruined the flow of certain sequences.

So while there are clear issues with the finished product, I felt there was enough in there to be entertaining, something I would happily recommend and aspects to show that there can be a strong film within this world.

Holland is worthy of the lead role and continues to show great maturity within his film career. The foundations in this story kept my interest as it links real history and historians to its plot. It is clear that the source material is there to be fully utilised. But I don't think it was quite done in this one.

There is a mid-credits scene that I'm sure fans of the game will understand. But to me, it was just set-up for a hopeful sequel. So while I don't think it fulfilled its potential, I wouldn't say no to a sequel.

Rating: 7/10