3 stars.

Spider-Man: No Way Home, starring Tom Holland, recently took the sixth spot at all-time box office take, hitting $1.8 billion internationally in ticket sales. While Avatar may be unbeatable with $2.8 billion in ticket sales, that James Cameron film wasn't released in the middle of a global pandemic.

The 6pm opening night session of Holland's latest, Uncharted, was a full house in the biggest theatre of the suburban cinema near my home, which makes me wonder if the personable young British actor might be personally responsible for the salvation of movie cinemas in the difficult transition back to live venues for audiences used to two years of sitting on the couch.

For grown-ups without young people or PlayStations in their homes, the source material for Uncharted is a series of ridiculously well-selling first-person action games, a kind of Tomb Raider for boys.

The audience in my cinema were obviously fans, with a few gasps of recognition for characters or storylines from the games, the biggest of which was the real-life appearance of one of the game's voice actors.

However, what was missing from this first-night screening packed with fans was laughter.

Given this is an action film with a built-in fan base, an enormous budget, and two of cinema's hottest stars, both noted for their comedy work, the filmmakers have really missed that secret ingredient that keeps audiences coming back for more.

As the film opens, we meet Nathan Drake (Holland) as he is hanging from the back of a plane, fighting off some guys we assume are bad.

Just as he gets the better of them, a red sports car falls off the back of the plane, taking him with it.

Backing up a few weeks, Drake is approached at the bar he works at by Victor Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) offering him a job that promises to utilise his skills as a thief and as an expert in lost treasure.

That's an oddly specific set of skills for a bartender to wield, but Sully knows of Drake's obsession, since childhood, with the supposed missing gold treasure carried on Ferdinand Magellan's ships.

How Sully knows this will become apparent in time, but standing between the two chaps and the treasure are a series of obstacles, human and otherwise.

Among these are billionaire treasure obsessive Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) and his hench-woman Braddock (Tati Gabrielle) and aggressive Aussie Chloe Frazer (Sophia Ali), rival fortune hunter.

While these professional looters have been on the trail of this hundreds-of-years-lost gold for many years, Drake is a natural at this game.

Within days he finds himself in Barcelona and the Philippines, hot on the trail of the fortune, and hanging off the back of a plane.

Some of the more impressive set pieces from a few of the Uncharted games are sifted together into the screenplay by Art Marcum, Rafe Judkins and Matt Holloway.

These chaps have penned screenplays for Iron Man and the TV series Chuck and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, all of which get that right tone of humour in an action setting.

Perhaps too many executive notes stripped the nuance out of their script.

Director Reuben Fleischer of Zombieland fame does good work in the action sequences, though some of the scenes in between could do with a trim.

Often a video game adaptation film will suffer for trying to build too much of the game's action - climbing, grunting, parkour, running along rooftops - to the detriment of the story.

The film's secret weapon is Tom Holland's natural athleticism, though I'm sure he's too expensive a star to risk and so possibly the stunt team deserve equal praise.

Holland also brings the same easy charm that makes his Spider-Man so engaging.

Sully is a nice older action role for the gracefully ageing Mark Wahlberg, and with this film set up as a prequel to the games there are perhaps many more years' work for both stars here.

American actress Sophia Ali sports a decent Aussie accent, which exists only because the character in the game is voiced by our own Claudia Black.