Uncharted

When a movie starts with its protagonist awakening while falling from a great height, after which he dodges assailants on a string of dangling cargo boxes and is hit by a car falling out of a plane...its aims couldn't be clearer.

So, no, Uncharted isn’t trying to cure cancer — it’s too focused on delivering popcorn entertainment in the vein of the National Treasure movies and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and succeeding marvelously at that mission.

The adaptation of the popular video game series finds a winning partner in director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland; Venom), who’s starting to corner the market on cheeky adventure/comedies. 

As aforementioned accidental skydiver Nathan Drake, Tom Holland makes for a convincing thief with encyclopedic knowledge, and exhibits charming rapport with Mark Wahlberg, bouncing back nicely from his recent series of duds as Victor Sullivan, a fellow “appreciator of antiquities” and former colleague of Nate’s M.I.A. brother Sam.

Nathan’s early character-building NYC bartending skills and pickpocket antics scale up nicely to the duo’s quest for Ferdinand Magellan’s lost treasure, which finds them globe-trotting while attempting to evade the evil Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his thugs.

Joined In Spain by the potentially untrustworthy Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali, Grey’s Anatomy), Nate and Sully go full Indiana Jones, and while the puzzle-solving may be a tad overly familiar, the banter by Iron Man scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway and TV writer Rafe Judkins stays fresh and Fleischer dishes out creative action sequences, the likes of which have viewers have never seen.

The steady forward motion is so effective that one doesn’t want the good times to end. Fortunately, audiences who appreciate such tried-and-true escapism with shiny new coats of paint seem destined to make Uncharted a hit, and further missions for Nate and Sully appear certain.

Grade: B-plus. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Sony Pictures)