Review: 'Uncharted' is a bromance with snappy twists that add up to a fun ride

One of the thrills of movies is the adrenaline rush that comes when an action flick spins your head around with jaw-dropping stunts. Though a shaky script doesn't get in the way, "Uncharted" -- in theaters for President's Day weekend -- adds up to a fun ride.

Its rocket fuel is Tom Holland, 25, whose "Spider Man: No Way Home" is now the third-highest grossing film of all time and still climbing. It's nifty to buddy him up with Mark Wahlberg, 50, who survived two "Transformers" epics without losing his sense of mischief.

Don't worry too much that "Uncharted" is adapted from a video game, a junk source for the tacky likes of "Mortal Kombat" and "Resident Evil." The film version finds its inspiration, not from PlayStation, but from such film blockbusters as "Indiana Jones" and "National Treasure."

The British Holland plays Nate Drake, a New York bartender/pickpocket eager to join Wahlberg's Victor "Sully" Sullivan to tomb raid a church in Barcelona and run off with $5 billion worth of buried gold left behind five centuries ago by famed explorer Ferdinand Magellan. That's a cue for "Zombieland" director Ruben Fleischer to kick the heroics into high gear.

But not before some backstory. Nate grew up in the St. Francis Boys Orphanage with his older brother, Sam (Rudy Pankow), who went missing. Do you think Sam will show up again? You bet. And will Sully, with a suspicious past, have anything to do with it? Right again.

Plot complexity is not a strong suit with "Uncharted. But action is. Whether Nate is falling out of a plane, dodging booby traps, deciphering maps or matching wits and fists around the globe with rival scavenger Santiago Moncada—Antonio Banderas in villain mode—he's in it to win it. So is Moncada, who figures he's got dibs since his family financed Magellan in the 16th century.

Women also figure in the farce, notably Sully's friend Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali) and Moncada martial arts ally Jo Braddock (a terrific Tati Gabrielle), but the flirty entanglements stay PG-13. "Uncharted" is a bromance with snappy twists coming every time the ladies outsmart the guys.

It helps that "Uncharted" is one of the better video games, a huge success that sparked three sequels and a prequel. The game has been around so long that Wahlberg was earlier meant to play Nate. Spotting Sully in a tux, Nate sasses, "pretty old for prom, aren't you?" Burn.

There's a reason "Uncharted" is still a better video game than a movie, even with a $125 million budget and two stars going mano-a-mano. The you-are-there participation in a game is impossible to reproduce on screen, where filmmakers call the shots, not gamers.

Still, "Uncharted" is far more watchable than it has any right to be and it gets better as it goes along, which almost never happens. The final sequence in which pirate ships are hurled into the air for a battle royale is eye-popping spectacle with nothing to apologize for.

The final credits point to "Uncharted" as the start of a new film franchise with Holland as a Zoomer version of Indiana Jones. That's a big fedora to fill. And Holland and director Fleischer are leagues away from the whip-cracking wonders achieved by Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg. But don't count out Holland's star power. He's unstoppable.