Film Review: Disappointing Actioner “Uncharted”

I really wanted to like this movie. The video game franchise upon which it’s built is terrific, Tom Holland, our hero, is charismatic and entertaining, and I love globe-trotting action films with a hint of history in the vein of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider. But the sad reality is that popular action film director Ruben Fleischer just doesn’t deliver. The industry has a running joke about how big screen video game adaptations are cursed and it’s hard not to wonder if that’s what doomed Uncharted from the start.

Uncharted is a treasure hunt, a quest for fabled Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s lost gold, reputed to be worth billions of dollars. Was it buried at the terminus of his circumnavigation adventure in Seville? Or was it hidden at the Philipines, his last known port of call prior to the great trek around the Cape of Good Hope and back to Spain? Young orphan adventures Sam Drake (Rudy Pankow) and Nate (Tiernan Jones) aim to find out, until Sam ducks out the window just ahead of the police arresting him for breaking into a museum…