UNCHARTED (2022) proves once again that movies based on video games often play out like… video games, and as a result, aren’t any more fun than sitting there watching someone play video games. Some people like that sort of thing. I don’t.

I only decided to watch UNCHARTED because of its two leads, Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, two actors I enjoy a lot, and I was curious to see how they would be working together. And you know what? After watching this movie, I don’t really know how they are working together, because they are playing two characters with as much depth as characters… in a video game. In short, while they were both doing their thing on screen, Holland acting like he walked off the set of his latest SPIDER-MAN movie, and Wahlberg like he was in another action/comedy, it didn’t matter, because the characters they were playing in this movie could have been played by any actor.

UNCHARTED, which is based on the popular video game franchise by Sony PlayStation, tells the story of Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) who is recruited by wisecracking treasure hunter…. always a bad sign in a movie when the main character has as his main job title “treasure hunter,”….Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to help him find a treasure lost by Magellan some five hundred years ago. I swear, as soon as this plot point was mentioned in the movie, I was ready to bale. I mean, if there was such a treasure, these two knuckleheads would be the last two people to be able to find it!

Anyway, Nathan agrees to help Sullivan, or “Sully,” because Sully tells him he had been working with Nathan’s older brother, who’s been out of Nathan’s life for years, and if Nathan helps him, Sully promises that there’s a good chance he’ll find his brother. Now, you don’t have to listen to Sully talk for more than three seconds before you realize he’s about as trustworthy as a villain in an Indiana Jones movie, but Nathan listens to him anyway and joins him on his treasure hunt. Along the way, they join forces with fellow treasure hunter and equally untrustworthy Chloe (Sophia Ali), and cross paths with villains Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) and Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas).

Yawn.

And more yawns.

There’s no getting around it. UNCHARTED was by far the dullest and most boring movie I’ve seen all year. In spite of polished and energetic directing by Ruben Fleischer, the story is a snooze, and the characters are literally right out of a video game with no more depth than that. It’s also one of those stories where the main characters find all the clues so easily there’s simply no dramatic tension whatsoever.

The screenplay by Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway scores highest with the banter between Holland and Wahlberg, but at the end of the day, this dialogue doesn’t matter because neither character is fleshed out. The experience was like listening to Holland and Wahlberg exchange wisecracks while they were playing video games. Their characters were no more interesting than two dudes playing a game. And the story is dreadfully unbelievable and dull.

Director Ruben Fleischer has made some good movies, films like ZOMBIELAND (2009) and VENOM (2018), and this movie looks great, but none of it means anything. It’s one polished action scene after another with no compelling characters or story, the perfect recipe for a two-hour nap.

UNCHARTED opens with a rousing action scene featuring Tom Holland’s character battling bad guys while falling out of a plane. It’s a sequence that borrows heavily from a far better sequence in the Timothy Dalton James Bond movie THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987). The sequence in THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS was better because they had real stuntmen up there falling out of the plane, whereas here it’s all CGI. Plus, it’s the opening sequence of the movie, and we know nothing about Holland’s character at this point. More importantly, we don’t know why he’s up there in that plane. Imagine if RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) began with Indiana Jones simply fighting villains without seeing him attempt to snag the treasure first. You’d be like, neat action, but who is this guy and why is he fighting all these guys?

UNCHARTED, which premiered in theaters back in February and is now available to rent on Prime Video, is the emotional equivalent of its source material, a video game. Some people like this. I don’t.

And if you like movies, you probably won’t either.

So, for movie fans, UNCHARTED is best left unwatched.

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