Year of Release: 2022
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Antonio Banderas, Sophia Ali, Tati Gabrielle, Steven Waddington, Pingi Moli, Tiernan Jones, Rudy Pankow, Georgia Goodman, Alana Boden, Joseph Balderrama
Genre: Action, Adventure
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 1
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Synopsis and Review
Director Ruben Fleischer continues his prolific output, following the commercially successful but critically reviled "Venom" and the sequel to the film that originally put him on the map, "Zombieland: Double Tap". This time around he's tackling the adaptation of a very successful video game, courtesy of a script by Rafe Judkins, Art Macum and Matt Holloway (Macum and Holloway have written the scripts for Jon Favreau's "Iron Man" and F. Gary Gray's "Men In Black: International", to name but a few). The narrative focuses itself on Nathan Drake, a young bartender with pickpocketing skills, who we initially witness as a teenager with his older brother being caught trying to steal a map, one that traces the Magellan expedition. The brothers get separated with Sam Drake fleeing and Nathan staying at the orphanage. In the present, Nathan is contacted by a man calling himself Sully, who claims to be a fortuned hunter who was working with his brother Sam. He claims his brother disappeared after they both stole a diary from an ancient Spanish navigator. Nathan agrees to work with him, hoping this will enable him to find Sam. They go to an auction to try to steal a golden cross linked to the Magellan crew, which they believe will give them more clues in their quest to get the gold they're pursuing. However more people are on the trail of that antique and that treasure, including Santiago Moncada, the last descendant of that Spanish family. They manage to steal the cross and fly to Barcelona where they hope to continue their search, since Sully has a contact there who had the other cross needed for more clues to be uncovered. However things quickly escalate and get out of control upon arrival.
Ruben Fleischer tries to modernize the Indiana Jones archeologist/adventurer character for newer generations with this film, without realizing that sadly this film (and its script) fails to provide much in terms of giving characters something memorable to say (or do), the same going for the tired premise of the film itself. The film which at times comes across as a slow burner that is about to reveal something tantalizing, actually never really reveals much, and most of the characters have very little to expose in terms of motivations or for that matter, of who they actually are (Tom Holland's Nathan Drake is a twenty something bartender who lives in a great space in the New York area, which in itself is fiction enough, though we never really know more about him, his relationships, what his goals are, nothing much really). The villains themselves, portrayed by the always underrated Antonio Banderas, and the muscle/brawl, embodied by the great Steven Waddington (who definitely had better things to do in Derek Jarman's "Edward II" and Christopher Hampton's "Carrington"), also have nothing much to do, other than appear "menacing" and "irritated", with their motivation at times appearing to be that precisely that (make facial grimaces). It's a film that is so vapidly built and staged that at times it comes across as a parody of what an action/adventure film actually is meant to be (or how it was done in prior decades). Tom Holland tries his best to bring Nathan Drake to life, but the character is as generic as possible, while the wooden Mark Wahlberg continues to basically portray the same character he actually does from film to film, though in this case he attempts to emulate a Cary Grant "To Catch a Thief" mystique, without any semblance of memorable results (what a difference a visionary director such as Paul Thomas Anderson makes, who managed to get a great performance from him in "Boogie Nights"). The production team is competent but unremarkable. This isn't worth watching.
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