THE LOST CRUSADE (UNCHARTED)

© Columbia Pictures

If you want to find a film that sums up just how uninspired Hollywood movies can be these days, 'Uncharted' is a pretty good example.

Made for $120 million, Ruben Fleischer's Columbia Pictures film is adapted from a Sony video game about treasure hunters scouring the world for ancient artefacts and getting into all kinds of jolly scrapes.

The film is basically an Indiana Jones rip-off and unashamedly so.

At various stages David O Russell, Neil Berger, Seth Gordon, Shawn Levy, Dan Trachtenberg and Travis Knight were all approached to direct the film before they eventually secured Fleischer.

© Columbia Pictures

The director who gave us both 'Zombieland' movies and the hugely underwhelming 'Gangster Squad' with Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone and Sean Penn, gamely takes on a games franchise but does he take it to another level?

'Uncharted' begins promisingly enough, with Tom Holland's New York bartender Nate Drake dangling from cargo hanging off the back of an aircraft carrier.

As he scrambles to get back onto the plane in a high octane action sequence, Nate has to fight off various hoods - dispatching them before making a death defying leap to safety.

With barely a moment to take a breath, he is sent somersaulting into the air by a car which rolls off the carrier.

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Cut to another preamble where Tiernan James' younger teen version of Nate and his brother Rudy Pankow's Sam try to break into a museum in Boston.

The brothers try to steal a map dating back to the infamous 16th Century Magellan Expedition, which went from Spain across the Atlantic, down South America, across the Pacific and wound up in the Philippines.

However they are caught breaking into the museum and Sam is kicked out of the orphanage they live in for his third brush with the law.

As he leaves of his own volition, Sam promises to return for his younger brother and leaves him a ring once belonging to Sir Francis Drake.

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Fifteen years later, Nate is whipping up a storm as a bartender in New York while pickpocketing wealthy patrons when Mark Wahlberg's fortune hunter Sully enters his life.

Sully claims to have been involved with Sam in tracking down the Magellan treasure.

Having recovered the Basque Magellan expedition leader Juan Sebastian Elcano's diary, he talks Nate into joining him on a quest to find Sam.

Nate has received several postcards from his brother over the years and is desperate to be reunited with him, so he agrees.

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Soon they are attending a glitzy auction where Sully intends to steal a golden cross linked to the expedition.

However Antonio Banderas' suave but ruthless treasure seeker, Santiago Moncada also has designs on it because his family funded the original Magellan expedition.

Moncada has hired Tati Gabrielle's knife wielding mercenary Jo Braddock, a former old flame of Sully's, to provide some muscle.

One of her colleagues, Steven Waddington's growly Scots villain also ends up getting into a scrap with Nate.

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This distraction provides Sully with a golden opportunity to nick the cross.

After pulling off the heist, the duo head to Barcelona in search of the Magellan treasure and come across Sophia Ali's Chloe who has another cross and swipes the one they acquired.

Persuading her to work with them, the trio navigate the crypts of Barcelona's Gothic church, Santa Maria del Pi for clues that will lead them to the Magellan treasure.

However Braddock and her muscly men are on their tail and it's only a matter of time before Nate finds himself dangling off the back of an aircraft carrier bound for the Philippines.

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Will Nate, Sully and Chloe get their hands on the Magellan treasure?

Can Moncada and Braddock stop them?

And how ropey is Steven Waddington's Glaswegian accent?

When it was released earlier this year, 'Uncharted' raced to box office success on the back of Tom Holland's growing star power following his spell as Marvel's Spiderman.

© Columbia Pictures

Fleischer's film is the third most successful movie in the history of video game adaptations and all that was achieved in a world still emerging from COVID.

However a box office take of $401 million doesn't mean it's a great movie.

As blockbusters go, it is pretty average - a bit like Jaume Collet-Serra's 'Jungle Cruise' last year.

It has a so so script full of laboured jokes and ridiculously overblown action sequences that are performed rather enthusiastically by the cast.

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And like 'Jungle Cruise,' it serves as a reminder of just how hard it is for movies like these to scale the heights of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' or 'Romancing the Stone'.

Intended as an origin story for the 'Uncharted' video game series, Fleischer's film just follows the beats of the Indiana Jones movies and never coming up with anything imaginative or original.

It is too slavish in its devotion to the treasure hunt adventure movie formula and trots out its action set pieces in the most uninspired way.

Holland, Wahlberg, Tati, Ali and Banderas are okay in their roles - they neither shine nor disappoint.

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'Borgen' star Pilou Asbaek pops up with an eye patch mid credits but it's really hard to get that excited.

While the effects are undoubtedly impressive, ultimately Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway's screenplay lacks what it takes to be a truly memorable blockbuster.

Their film regularly stretches credulity - helicopters towing Spanish galleons, anyone? 

And the banter is as dull as an episode of 'Cash in the Attic'.

© Columbia Pictures

In the end, Fleischer and his cast have done enough to guarantee an 'Uncharted' franchise.

And while the prospect of sequels is hardly a cause for great celebration, with the bar set this low things can only get better - right?

Don't count on it.

('Uncharted' was released on UK and Irish cinemas on February 11, 2022)