by Jason Adams
When is a cannonball not just a cannonball? When it's a sight-gag aimed straight at Tom Holland's crotch, that's when. Rolling up out of nowhere in the explosive and overblown finale to Ruben Fleischer's fitfully entertaining but mostly lifeless video-game adaptation Uncharted -- which involves two full-sized pirate ships being swung below dueling helicopters careening through tropical passageways; don't ask -- the cannonball strikes me as more than just a cannonball and more than just a kick-in-the-nuts punchline. The cannonball becomes a Mousetrap-type puzzle-piece that Uncharted doesn't have the madcap skill to deploy in any interesting fashion. It's a what-could-have-been in the movie that never was.
Because a better filmmaker would've introduced that cannonball, or, even better, dozens of them, earlier...
We would have seen them banging around the unsteady surface of these freewheeling topsy-turvy boats, perhaps hitting bad guys at the right moment. Perhaps there's a chase where the characters run on them Wile E. Coyote style? Picture that maze game we all played as children where you try to get the little ball into the center hole by tilting the surface around, made blockbuster larger-than-life epic. Imagine what a Steven Spielberg or Joe Dante would have done with the physical comedy of setting that cannonball up for a richer target? The pieces they would have planted early on in the sequence that become pay-offs down the line. But no, ten minutes into this ongoing spectacle Fleischer just has a cannonball pop out of nowhere and hit Tom Holland in the nuts. That's the low-hanging fruit (sorry) that Uncharted deals in, time and again -- if there's an obvious, this movie will find it.
If you're unfamiliar with the video games (I'm with you) they're Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider adjacent, with Nathan Drake as a globe-hopping adventurer looking for the typical glittering booty of yore. I did know beforehand that there was outcry when Holland was cast as Drake, who in the games is a middle-aged man scamp of the Nathan Fillion sort -- Tom Holland is not that, and Uncharted very much wants Tom Holland to very much not be that. Uncharted wants Peter Parker. Just one who can swear lightly and rob rich girls without a second thought. And so that's what we get. Don't go so far as to think that this is might be a Peter Parker who fucks, though -- at one point Mark Wahlberg's character (as the potentially dubious treasure-hunter who drags Tom on the treasure's trail) implies Tom's got the hots for a woman and it lands with all the thud of a cannonball -- this dude's crotch is for violence and mild chicanery only, thank you.
The story, a stitched-together patchwork of old frayed maps, cobwebbed passageways, and sinister Euro-sleaze types (Antonio Banderas, collecting a paycheck), has Nathan living life as a pickpocketing bartender, abandoned years earlier by his brother Sam. Soon enough Drake gets sucked into the bigger-time by Wahlberg's Sully, who has been trying to find Magellan's fabled gold stash along with Sam before something mysterious happened, leading to Sam's disappearance. Sully thinks Nathan might have a clue via cryptic communications from his brother on about where to go next, and before you know it they're smashing through the churches and Papa Johns of Barcelona together, forging a sibling-like relationship of their own all while a gang of scary mercenary-types (led by Tati Gabrielle, far too good for what she's given) conduct most of their violence just off-frame, lest this thing get too scary for the target audience.
There are some good gags scattered about Uncharted -- I quite liked how the hunt that takes them through the usual crypts and tombs buried beneath ancient Barcelona is broken up by a literally-underground dance club and the aforementioned Papa Johns -- but like that product placement this is first and foremost a sanded-down franchise-building machine at work, and feels it from start to finish. The baddies are so nondescript that the standout is best known for being Scottish, and the globetrotting (a big part of what makes this genre so much fun) is rushed and half-glanced, so we could be in any "beach" or any "city" at all times. A quick shot of Gaudi's Sagrada Família at one point feels like it's kind of own desecration; this generic movie does not earn that true spectacle.
Uncharted isn't as bad as Netflix's Red Notice earlier this year and that was, by their accounts, a hit, so perhaps this one too will sit well with audiences who are understandably just looking for a distraction -- I get it. Holland is serviceable, khaki-bland, appealing to all the quadrants. Wahlberg is terrible but what's new there; somebody apparently likes what he's bringing. If only some ingenuity and personality had managed to weasel their way through the committees that plainly compacted this Franken-movie into its final perfect cubed form, what could have been? Right? If you deviate off the map that's when your trip gets interesting. And sometimes a proper kick in the nuts is just what's called for.
Uncharted opens Friday in movie theaters