PREMISE
Nathan Drake is recruited by treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan to recover a fortune lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada.
THE GOOD STUFF
MARK WAHLBERG – Perhaps it is the fact that Wahlberg has been so prolific over the years, that he’s worked with so many people, and that he’s so familiar in our psyche that we just don’t appreciate what he brings to the table whenever he’s a part of a movie such as this one. Wahlberg is funny, and he tends to have chemistry with damn near any other co-star you put next to him on-screen, whether it be Denzel Washington, Will Ferrell, George Clooney, a CGI bear, or in this case Tom Holland.
This movie has advertised itself thoroughly off of the chemistry of Holland and Wahlberg. And that is with good reason. This is a movie trying VERY HARD to sell Holland as a categorical leading man type (more on that in a sec). Instead, it shows us once again that Wahlberg has found yet another actor that he has tons of chemistry with on-screen.
TOM HOLLAND – I spent quite a bit of time playing these Uncharted video games, and I got to tell ya, Holland does capture the essence of the character from the game very well. There is a playful kind of audaciousness to the character of Nathan Drake, which is, of course, right in the wheelhouse of Tom Holland. There are zero complaints about what he does when it comes to the character.
There are zero complaints……about that.
TATI GABRIELLE – I don’t know why this is, for when it comes to certain actors, I can’t help but see if action choreography comes naturally to them. I have perhaps become over-critical on how a fight scene choreography flows and if it looks more like a dance than an actual fight. As the movie THE 355 showed us earlier this year, it doesn’t matter how great an actor you are, sometimes, you just can’t teach how to make action choreography seem natural.
Tati Gabrielle has been in no less than three very notable shows over the past couple of years that I have ZERO knowledge of. The Netflix shows, THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA, YOU, and the CW science fiction series THE 100. I do have to say, if she doesn’t become a bigger star in any other way, at the very least, she should continue to do action films. It’s refreshing watching her natural charisma and physical presence when it comes to beating up people physically larger than she is.
THE BAD STUFF
TOM HOLLAND – I can’t help but emphasize this enough. Tom Holland is at his best WHEN HE IS WITH A GOOD CO-STAR. Metaphorically speaking, he is a great jelly to somebody else’s peanut butter and vice versa. That’s been proven in the SPIDER-MAN movies (Robert Downey Jr, Zendaya, Cumberbatch, Gyllenhaal) in the Pixar movie ONWARD (Chris Pratt), and you see that in this film.
But as the movies CHERRY and CHAOS WALKING have THOROUGHLY proved, there is a Zac Efron-Channing Tatum-Taylor Kitsch-Sam Worthington-Charlie Hunnam-ish PUSH for Holland to be the next big movie star. You can see them highlight his efforts to carry the star power without Wahlberg in this movie a lot of the time. And like those other aforementioned clean-cut, super ripped, baby-faced actors working out while sweaty in slo-mo who were all over these big type tent poles for a period of time before they suddenly weren’t anymore… the concept of him being THAT guy doesn’t seem like a fit. Holland needs somebody to play off of when it comes to movies like this, and this movie is strongest when he is with his mega movie star co-star. Not when he is carrying the film by himself.
THE UGLY STUFF
Honestly nothing. It only took me a month to find a movie without any ugly stuff to talk about. Given how bad this month started, it seemed bleak there for a while.
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UNCHARTED has sold itself as light-hearted fun, as an easy-breezy popcorn movie. And when it comes to just that, it hits the nail right on the head in the same way that the NATIONAL TREASURE films, or even the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies, did. If people are not grading this movie on the same curve as they do THOSE films, then basically, they may be putting all these CGI action films in the same bucket. And they are not all the same.
UNCHARTED is playing in theatres now.
