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Credit: Clay Enos
Prime Video just added one of the most divisive video game adaptations ever to its deep library of movies.
I’m, of course, talking about “Uncharted,” the action movie starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, based on the Naughty Dog video game series of the same name.
But while Naughty Dog’s most famous video game adaptation — “The Last of Us” — would arrive a year later to near-universal acclaim, this 2022 film was derided by critics, earning a putrid 41% on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
However, audiences strongly disagreed with the critics, rating it a “Verified Hot” 89% on the site. They also drove the film to an impressive $407.1 million at the box office.
Having seen it in theaters myself, I have to say I side with the fans on this one. Here’s what you need to know about 2022’s “Uncharted” and why it’s worth watching now that it’s on Prime Video.
What is ‘Uncharted’ about?
“Uncharted” stars Holland as Nathan “Nate” Drake, a kleptomaniac bartender in New York whose brother, Sam (Rudy Pankow), left him behind in an orphanage as a kid and became a professional treasure hunter.
But despite that abandonment, the two still stayed in contact via postcards Sam would send, until one day, they stopped. At the same time that is happening, one of Sam’s associates, Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Wahlberg), comes to Nate with an offer to help him find the lost treasure of Ferdinand Magellan’s crew, which Sam had been helping Sully hunt down.
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Wanting to find out what happened to Sam, Nate agrees to team up with Sully. That leads them to an auction where they cross paths with the dangerous Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his chief lieutenant Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), and they only just manage to escape. So they head to Barcelona to recruit another one of Sully’s contacts, fortune hunter Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali).
This movie is divisive — but I found it fun to watch
Credit: Sony
Just from that synopsis, you can already tell that “Uncharted” isn’t lacking for star power on its call sheet. The movie’s cast is loaded with it.
It’s also pulling from some beloved source material. Like with “The Last of Us,” fans really love the world that Naughty Dog built in the “Uncharted” game series and were definitely excited to see it on the big screen.
I’m not sure this movie delivered on that last front, certainly not to the level that “The Last of Us” season 1 would the following year. But this movie is fun to watch, copying the template set by numerous fun action-adventure movies before it — the same movies the “Uncharted” games frankly ripped off for their premise.
In their review for Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the movie “Raiders of the Lost National Treasure of the Fast & Furious Caribbean.” While they meant that derogatorily, I think it’s a spot-on assessment of why you’d want to watch this movie.
Sure, it’s a pale imitation of something like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (though I’m not sure it’s that far off “National Treasure”), but not every movie can be “Raiders,” something that every subsequent “Indiana Jones” movie has proven multiple times over.
Sometimes, you just need a fun, dumb action movie with some stars. On that front, “Uncharted” delivers, and most fans who have seen it clearly agree.
Stream “Uncharted” on Prime Video now
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