The Movie Guru: ‘Uncharted’ badly written, but has some fun moments

Don’t think of “Uncharted” as a video game adaptation.

This is for the movie’s sake, not yours. Opening in theaters this weekend, “Uncharted” will be a bitter disappointment for anyone who loved the PlayStation game series it’s based on. If you don’t know anything about the games, however, it’s an average action-adventure movie that overcomes bad writing to get considerably better in the second half.

For those unfamiliar with the games, “Uncharted” is basically another variation of the modernized “Indiana Jones” stories already popularized by “Tomb Raider.” Here our main adventurer is Nathan Drake, who grew up poor and is comfortable skirting the edges of the law to get what he needs. The movie serves as something of an origin story for the character — a different one than you’ll find in the games — so saying more than that counts as spoilers.

If you’re a fan of the games, just stay away. What the movie does to a major character is almost tantamount to character assassination, enough that it’s physically painful to watch. Tom Holland is also miscast as Drake, though the people who are unfamiliar with the games won’t know that.

Even non-fans might not want to sit through the movie’s explanation of how he makes it to adventurer status. It’s by far the worst part of the movie, with a backstory that’s both overly complicated and barely delivered on and a deeply uninteresting meeting with one of the movie’s other main characters. Holland tries hard to keep people interested, but Mark Whalberg clearly put it in his contract somewhere that he wouldn’t have to change facial expressions at any point.

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This is also where “Uncharted” pretends it’s a heist movie, and shows that it’s genuinely bad at committing actual crime. Holland does some good pickpocketing, but a big heist early on is poorly paced and boring on several levels. Instead of generating any kind of excitement, you just want it to be over.

Thankfully, things start to pick up soon after that. The movie is much better at action/adventure than it is at crime, and there’s some good action/puzzle solving sequences along with a fairly clever twist or two. There are whole stretches where it actually becomes fun to watch, and it becomes easier to forgive them for everything you had to sit through in the first half. The emotional moments still fall flat, but if you’re really unfamiliar with the original story that creates its own kind of drama.

There are also some really nice visuals in the second half, including the flying ships sequence from the trailers. That sequence is one of the best in the movie, enough that you’ll be happy to ignore all the logic-defying aspects. It also avoids some of the filming issues evident in an earlier action scene, which means there’s nothing to knock you out of the moment.

Even for people who don’t know the games, “Uncharted” isn’t a great movie. But at least they’ll have a little bit of fun before it’s over.

Jenniffer Wardell is an award-winning movie critic and member of the Denver Film Critics Society. Find her on Twitter at @wardellwriter or drop her a line at themovieguruslc@gmail.com.